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MacBreak Weekly 1010: A Strand of Woz's Beard Hair
02:19:09
Apple's Record Quarter
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- [00:00]
A
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Jason Snell has the week off, but Micah Sargent joins us. Shelly Brisbane is here. Andy Inako will talk about Apple's staggering iPhone sales. A record quarter. Yep, Jason Snell predicted it. Apple goes the subscription route. But how far is too far? And all the specs finally revealed of the iPhone fold. Next on MacBreak Weekly, podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly. Episode 1010, recorded February 3, 2026. A strand of Woz's beard hair. It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Time to cover the latest apful news, as you may remember from previously on Mac Break Weekly. Jason Snell is on vacation. The wonderful Shelly Brisbane's filling in today. Hello, Shelly. Good to see you.
- [01:01]
B
Hi, Leo. Good to see you, too.
- [01:03]
A
Actually, you might. I'm not sure which seat you're in. You're either in the Snell seat or the Lindsay seat. You're in one of those seats. She's in the Lindsay seat. Well, then. All right, then. She's. By the way, from the wonderful Texas Standard Radio, then, in the Snell seat. That would be Micah Sargent. It's a comfortable seat. Hello, host of iOS Today. He's doing a long shift today. He just got off iOS today. And also tech news weekly on this same bat channel.
- [01:33]
C
Same bat channel, same bat place.
- [01:35]
A
And let's not forget Micah's crafting corner, the chill place. The chill every month in our club. What are you doing now? You were doing paint by numbers.
- [01:44]
C
Paint by number is still. It's still on. It's still happening. I've got a lot of great stuff down the pipeline, though. It's just been great getting to. We all just hang out and we talk about our crafts and we talk about life and talk about the fun food we're eating. It's just a. Yeah, nice chill zone.
- [02:00]
A
But I'm looking.
- [02:01]
C
I'm. I think I'm gonna be tuning in this Friday to your.
- [02:04]
A
Well, I'm very. I'm getting. I got. I got Claude pilled, but I'll explain. And also with us, Andy and A.O. from the library. Hello.
- [02:14]
D
Hello. Excited as heck because it is 32 degree outside today. First day. It's not above freezing, but it's at freezing, which is. I mean, I got. I got flip flops on. I got like a steel bucket full of, like, margaritas here. We're all basking in the joy of the beach life.
- [02:35]
A
Aren't you at freezing?
- [02:36]
D
Yeah.
- [02:38]
B
It's.
- [02:38]
A
Suddenly Andy's in Margaritaville. Yeah, wasted away. So. So there's a lot of little stuff going on. I guess it's kind of hard. I don't like doing it without Jason here, but he left us with a bunch of graphs. The quote of the week is Tim Cook's quote of the week. The iPhone has sold in staggering numbers.
- [03:06]
D
Yeah, there are a whole bunch of. And there are humble brags like all throughout his comments and the Q and A about. Yeah, I mean, we're supply constrained, but it's not because of the AI industry, like taking our chips. It's that we just can't build these darn things fast enough. I mean, we thought we had enough.
- [03:24]
A
You guys, you just keep buying them.
- [03:27]
D
Know, and you know how like, you know, okay, wearables is down 2%. Okay, okay. But if we could have bought, if we could have sold as many AirPods Pro as people were wanting to buy, we would have been up, up, up, baby. I mean, how.
- [03:41]
A
And we have to give credit, Jason Snell predicted last week it would be Apple's biggest quarter ever. Yeah, it wasn't, I mean, a real stretch to predict that, but yeah, I.
- [03:52]
D
Mean, I mean, almost every metric, and they were very, very happy to report this. Almost every metric they had is like not, not only like up, up, up in many cases, like record for like the last two or three years, maybe even the record for like forever. China, for instance, they were like. Whereas in previous years of these calls, one of the biggest Q and A questions has always been, well, how are you doing in China? Because you're facing a lot of headwinds here and I don't know what levers you're able to push. That's another buzzword that's come up in the past. Levers. They're pulling levers to make things happen. And now it's like, no, it's like up 38% somewhere. And adoption rates, we have like the number one selling phone, number one individual selling desktop PC, number one individual selling laptop in the MacBook Air. So yeah, I mean, this is a good day to beat Tim Cook. So long as they're not asking you about where you're getting your dram from in the next two quarters or so. Long as you're not asking about what.
- [04:50]
B
He did over the weekend. Don't ask him what he did over the weekend, where he might have gone.
- [04:57]
A
I just hope it wasn't to see Melania for a second. I'm just hoping Tim said, you know, I'm going down to the local amc, I just gotta see it again. You know, there were so many details I missed.
- [05:09]
B
At least Apple TV did not bid or win the bidding for that.
- [05:14]
C
Oh, can you imagine the way that they've been making F1 everything and notifying me on every device about the F1 film?
- [05:23]
A
I can only imagine what they really over over. They did that. They've done that all the time. They did it with coda. They do it. It's a promotional vehicle. And I think they should learn. Take a lesson from Amazon. We've all come to hate Amazon, the fire tv, the Echoes, because they're just promotional devices. Careful, Apple. You're, you're. In fact, there's a few things we're going to talk about. Yes, careful Apple. But let me, let me first give you the top line. Highest revenue ever. This is, remember, for three months, 143 billion in three months. IPhone 85.3 billion of that, much more than half iPhone sales grew 23% year over year. So no wonder Tim's saying this is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had. Oh, my gosh. And yeah, revenue up 38% in China, as you pointed out. Mac revenue down 7%. Yeah, that's the poorest of all of the Apple categories.
- [06:24]
D
But with all of these, like all the analysts and everybody are basically talking about where the. Another buzzword on your bingo card is difficult compare, because this quarter last year was a huge, huge, sweeping introduction of new M5 MacBooks. So that was like artificially high. And they're saying, well, okay, yeah, and it's down. But that's compared to as.
- [06:46]
A
They'Ve got a lot of Apple Mac stuff coming out this year, which will probably propel them ahead a little bit. There's also another story which is that Mac Minis are flying off the shelves because of this new AI agent, which I have put on my Mini as well. Openclaw ne claudebot ne molt bot, which is a very risky but highly rewarding AI personal assistant is the best way to describe it. That has personality, that will work overnight. And as just the tiniest, tiniest bit of security, people are saying, well, I went out and I got a new Mac Mini just for that, so that it's on its own machine. But then I gave it permission to do everything in the credit card, so what the heck. Anyway, apparently Mac Minis are sold out all over the place, especially the base model, because you don't need much. So I think the next quarter might be better for Mac. Gross margin, not so gross. 48.2%. That's 40.7 on products. But look at the services margin and this is going to inform some of the stories we're going to talk about later in this show. 76.5% profit on services. It's all profit basically all the way down. You know so a really great, a really great quarter. The, the graphs from, from six colors are just full of green. IPad up 6%. Wearables down 2% and that's the thing.
- [08:21]
C
With, with that, that down I'm pretty sure it's been down, down, down, down, down for a while in terms of wearables and I do we anyone have any insight on that? What do we think?
- [08:31]
A
Well, Andy said it. Part of it was they couldn't make enough AirPods to fill that demand. I think watch maybe people is saturated.
- [08:41]
B
You think the watch and AirPod upgrades that happened were not revolutionary? I mean I think they were fine incremental upgrades but that's not the kind of upgrade that causes people to ditch whatever device, especially the watch. It's a pretty long lasting device. I think people think of watches like computers but they really aren't. I mean if you don't keep a watch five years it's because you have extra disposable income because you can easily do that if you want to. And so it doesn't surprise me that they're down a little bit. I don't know whether some super revolutionary new product would make them go up, but that seems relatively flat. I mean 2% is not particularly flat.
- [09:19]
A
Nothing to worry about. As Jason Snell points out, the quarter set an all time record for operating cash flow of three months. Remember $53.9 billion. Jason writes, accounting nerds, this is your stand up and cheer moment. The cash flow must flow. He also points out that when asked about Google and their deal for AI with Google Parikh, this new CFO said we aren't going to provide any details on our arrangement in collaboration with Google. And when Ben writes this of Melius tried to get more out of Cook only to be stonewalled. He replied on the call. This is on the analyst called Bummer. Okay, I tried. And Tim says you did through a squall of laughter.
- [10:09]
D
There were two main themes through the Q and A and one of them was supply constraints. The other one was actually not just AI, but specifically Google AI. And then they were just consistently parrying this off as saying that essentially if anything they were trying to minimize the contribution that Google was making or at least trying not to highlight it. I think the closest to something that was kind of interesting we got was that Tim wanted to at least put analysts focused on the, on the idea that Google and Apple are collaborating together to build this thing as opposed to. No. Google is basically giving us the machinery we need to build the stuff that we want and also basically trying to compartmentalize it I think into. They are helping us to build the new version of Siri as opposed to Apple Intelligence is going to be broadly based on the Gemini model that they are building for us. So they're trying to basically, basically not make the analysts think that we are desperate and we basically had to rent out this capability. He's also asked questions like they're trying to ask well now that you have this deal with Google and now that part of this deal appears to be that some of this work is going to be hosted by Gemini's, by Google's servers, is that going to affect your capital expenditures? Does that mean you're not going to have to spend quite so much on your own compute support for this? And again he kind of parried it and gave a non answer. I think they're trying to again make sure that the focus is on no, we are an AI company. As a matter of fact one of the most interesting quotes, surprising one is I think Tim actually explicitly in his opening comments, I don't have the quote in front of me in my notes, but basically saying that the Mac is the number one top best platform for AI anywhere ever. Which okay, lies, lies. That seemed like an ambitious thing to say. Maybe he. I don't know.
- [12:02]
A
Actually it is interesting how much of it actually surprises me because a lot of what the latest stuff in AI is command line bases in the terminal but if you install OpenClaw for instance, it says well use Homebrew to install a bunch of these plugins. I mean it's very Mac focused. Like I said, people are buying Mac Minis, not that you can't run it on Linux. In fact, you know, I think if, if people really think hard the Linux would be a much better place to do it. But Apple, you know, has put NPUs, you know, neural processing units in its system. On a chip they have a lot of RAM that is accessible to the, you know, it's not in the gpu but it's accessible to the AI and that's what AI loves a lot of ram.
- [12:49]
B
So you know, the tagline on the, the tagline on the Mac mini page on the Apple site is built for Apple Intelligence. And I'm sure Apple is happy to have you conf Apple Intelligence with AI So it's just kind of a fun juxtaposition when you think about all the Mac Minis flying off.
- [13:05]
A
Well and there were a couple of announcements that really focused on AI on the Mac. We'll talk about that just a little bit. But before we get off the earnings, let me mention services crossing $30 billion for the first time ever. It's really services have been the. And this horrible thing called arpu, average revenue per user has been a real focus of Apple and it's a real success. I think there's no question about that.
- [13:32]
B
They also said it's going to beef that up, you know.
- [13:35]
A
Well and yeah, and I think Apple's going to get a little greedy on this. We'll talk about that too. Apple says two and a half billion active devices around the world. I think that's including Macs, right? And watches and yeah, that's everything.
- [13:50]
D
And that factors into a little bit of services. They're amongst the record setting they've done is record setting in advertising revenue although they don't break, they don't break things down, they don't break services down into category of performance. But I think they did say that yeah, even on the list of things that have set records they included I think advertising in that list and they were asked a question by an analyst saying that well, does that. I see that services is doing well. I see that you're basically extending advertising, particularly probably referring to the use of ads in the App Store, but saying well are you looking forward to extending the reach of advertising into say. And he specifically asked about Maps and Apple TV and that's where Kevin park said again didn't answer it directly but essentially said that well, we think that the growth is mostly because we've got all these devices which implies that we have. That Apple has a lot of different eyeballs to put ads in front of. But they did say that yeah, advertising is something that we are very, very happy with and we're happy to. We feel as though we haven't reached the bottom of the well yet. Last thing before we get off of the earnings call. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is how boastful they were correctly so about how well they're doing in China and India essentially making the point that we haven't found we have yet to sell iPhones to everybody out there who wants to sell an iPhone. And it's not just about supply constra spot markets where they're, particularly with India where they're saying that hey look, we've got, we're making huge, huge inroads. Basically the data that we're seeing in our sales quarter to quarter is showing us that there are more and more people who in India who are coming to iPhone from the Android platform. They're already trumpeting how well they're doing in China where again, we are finding people are coming to Our Apple, to MacBooks and to iPhones from their existing devices. So it's not as though that's waning. It's like we have not tapped the end of that vein yet. We're not desperate to keep selling iPhones to just existing customers. We are actually converting people in these markets from Android users and Windows users and Huawei users or whatever to the Apple ecosystem, which is another thing that I'm sure that all the analysts and investors are very, very tickled to death to hear.
- [16:10]
A
Mark Gurman's Bloomberg newsletter on Sunday said Apple's historic quarter doesn't change the need for AI reckoning now. Remember, he's writing for Bloomberg now, so a lot of what he talks about is really intended for investors. Right. And so forth. He says the next 25 years will be defined by AI. Apple will need to rebuild its hardware and operating systems using an AI first mentality, with voice interactions and AI agents replacing the current app centric model. That's a stretch for me. That's a stretch. I think what's happening, I'll be honest, and I spend a lot of time with AI nowadays and we cover AI on intelligent machines, is that the world is splitting into kind of two camps. The people who've been really AI pilled, who don't care what operating system they're using. In fact, one of the things all this agentic AI is doing is separating you from brands and big tech companies. They're all just switchboards to whatever you want. And honestly, the command line is probably the easiest way to do that. And then the other group of people is people who want an iPad and a GUI and they want to click on buttons and stuff. Apple would make a huge mistake catering to that first group and abandoning the second group, which is their core audience is GUI users. Am I right?
- [17:40]
C
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's. Yeah, that's sort of the whole point. I feel it's the whole point. Yeah. So it is. But you don't lose them.
- [17:50]
A
Is it an antiquated.
- [17:51]
B
I think it's not only the gui, it's the familiar interface, but it's also AI skepticism and the degree to which, because AI is so integral to so many business endeavors that it's really being rammed down people's throats and I think they feel it in terms of advertising, in terms of messages they hear all day long, not only from the tech companies that want to sell themselves stuff directly, but from, you know, underwriters on public radio in my part of the world or just random ads. You might hear so and such, and such company is an, is an AI company now and I, I think for a lot of people and, and it could be a minority, but I think for a lot of people there is AI rejection or AI skepticism because it feels like something that they didn't really want. And I think the proponents of AI will point to the high use of Chat, GPT and Gemini and all of the other agents out there and they'd be right to points. But at the same time there's enough AI skepticism in the world that it makes sense for Apple to keep its foot in what is. I can't think of a better word because I, but I don't like this word traditional computing. Computing in the way of, you know, you're moving files around, you're swiping left and right to manipulate objects and, and that is comfortable to most people and, and frankly accomplishes much of what they want to accomplish because a lot of AI is still speculative and is, it feels like something that hackers do, especially if you getting involved with command lines and agent agentic programming and that sort of thing. So I think Apple is right to sort of keep its feet on both sides of that fence.
- [19:26]
D
Yeah, I think that that's an excellent point. And that was another thing that was kind of hinted at in comments in the, in the call essentially that we don't know, we don't know exactly what people want from AI yet. We're just going to tell you that we are ready, we're ready for it when whatever happens. But it's, I mean if Apple has historically been like their, their big revolution in the 80s of course was to bring the GUI to the mainstream, maybe they're in a position to sort of leverage that sort of spirit and create use AI not as a feature that you turn to or something that you have to sort of throw your blind trust in, but as the new interface for the machine to the ability to say collect all of the really good Apple news from the last week. I want to, I want to highlight on the earnings call and please put it in an Omni outliner spreadsheet organized by topic. And that's simply instead of actually going through, pulling down menus, cut copying Pasting switch screen apps. It just simply happens for you that could be part of it. And I'm sure that we'll be talking about a major acquisition that they made this week, that, that and we'll talk about that later. But that implies that they're very, very interested in AI as the human to computer interface. Whether it is wearables or just simply this desktop has a microphone on it. Why not just simply ask it to do the thing that you want it to do and it'll do it?
- [20:52]
A
Gurman writes even if Apple continues to thrive in the smartphone market, it could still lose its standing in a fast changing tech world. The company's own senior executives understand this and privately question whether Apple has the right ingredients to win in the AI first landscape. I mean Gurman has bought into this whole thing and I think it is a real challenge for Apple and I think you're right Shelley. I think there are a lot of people Microsoft is the poster child for this. Microsoft is thrusting copilot down users throats. The stock market punished them last week, huge drop. They lost billions in cap because of that I think and because of the cost of doing that. And I think users don't like it. I think Apple, whether intentionally or just because they couldn't get it together, has ended up in the right position which is that AI is something you choose, that you can absolutely do it if you want on a Mac, you can absolutely do if you want on an iPhone. You can choose any AI you want but it's not being thrust down your throat. And I think Apple would be smart to note what's happening to Microsoft.
- [22:03]
B
Right. And then there were features in the early days of smartphones that were available but that had not yet been adopted by users. And the smart companies let the users be their guide in terms of when those features became available. They sounded sort of outrageous. Like you'd get push notifications from your phone or you'd have text messages so that anybody could contact you at any time or advertisers could get in touch with you via banner ads. All the sort of things that we kind of take for granted and expect from smartphones. There was a time when the phone was thought of as a phone and we make, make and receive calls via numbers on it and there. And so users had to come to adop. In fact it happened more slowly in the United States than it did in Europe. So it was sort of an interesting situation for companies like Apple and others who are making smartphones in the late aughts because they had to sort of modulate what can we provide versus what do users want? And I think again, the pressure from investors and from businesses who are adapting to AI for reasons, because they have to, that kind of pressure is putting companies like Apple in a position of trying to lead users down roads they're not ready to go down yet.
- [23:20]
A
Well, and one of the things that really worries me is this focus on subscriptions. We've already seen the Creator Studio. Gurman said he thinks that Apple has decided arpu the subscriptions are the key to future revenue. He says we already have subscriptions tied to Apple Music, iCloud Arcade, Apple TV and of course now Creator Studio. And incidentally, people have noted that if you are using the iWork versions that aren't part of the studio, you're getting ads now in iWork. And that's what you were talking about. Andy, Apple's also looking at this ad revenue. I think subscriptions and ads are consumer hostile. I don't know if consumer users are going to like that.
- [24:05]
D
First off, I'm not sure how much credence I give to the Gurman comment because that came in the newsletter, in the Q and A and so he's not citing, hey, I have sources that say that this is a direction they're interested in going in. He wasn't saying, I have sources that say that they're trying to put more ads into Apple TV or whatever. I think that this is just him looking at input of questions and coming up with an answer. However. Yeah, I mean people are really, really kicking back, especially on Reddit and other public forums about how it's not just you double click on the version of iWork that you actually own that you already had and oh well, there's a splash screen when you launch. Oh, by the way, hey, how about we switch it to a subscription? They're complaining that no in the ui, it's like in the toolbar here is like an urge a call to action to switch to the subscription model, which would absolutely bite. I mean that absolutely is just crossing the lines they shouldn't cross. And again, they did say that Kevin in the call did say that we have 2.5 billion active users. That's a lot of surfaces on our devices in which we could potentially put ads. He didn't want to go as far as to say yes, every time you drop down the Apple Menu, we're going to lease out the space of the Apple Menu in the upper left hand corner to have whatever mini ad you want to run. But it does say that, yeah, we are very, very aware that there is some untapped potential here to go to.
- [25:31]
B
And what makes it especially consumer hostile. I mean it's one thing you've had iwork for years and years and people may be attached to pages or numbers or Keynote. I personally think Keynote is the far best of those iWork apps currently because numbers and Pages have been allowed to run lie fallow. Even though there have been some minor improvements, there's still a lot wrong with those apps. So it's one thing to take an app that people love and say, you know what, we can't give this away to you anymore. We have to support it with ads or whatever version of that there is. Even if it's an app that that's beloved and that people have been getting valuable use out of, that's free. But it's another thing when you have an app that has not grown along with the platform, has not become more sophisticated, has not become something that people can't use something else to get the work that they want accomplished. And then you say, hey, we're going to put ads in it or we're going to try and mine you to subscriptions. Because for an awful lot of people Google Docs, Google Sheets is right over there. Or if they have a 365 subscription, they could go the Microsoft route and get the copilot pill. Many options out there and it doesn't seem like the the that Apple Pages and Apple numbers are a strong enough reason for people to go, you know what, I'm going to put up with a few ads or I'm going to add a subscription. Unless you're already using the Creator Studio tools and that you might find pages and numbers, those, those versions an adjunct to what you're already doing. But if you're just an iWork person, I just can't see that it makes any sense.
- [26:56]
A
Wasn't it to me, maybe my memory's wrong. One of the real selling points of the Mac was all the stuff that came built in for free. Right.
- [27:04]
C
Without bloatware or without all the ads, without all that stuff getting in the way. Without all the cruft. That was the whole point of the.
- [27:11]
A
It was everything you needed in the computer.
- [27:13]
C
Yeah.
- [27:14]
B
It's the iOS has always had that advantage over Android too.
- [27:17]
C
Yeah. And that's another thing, by the way, pro tip to anyone who's going through this process right now of considering Creator Studio. If you subscribe to Creator Studio, don't forget to then go back if you have a subscription to Final Cut Pro for iPad, because you're going to need to cancel that separately.
- [27:37]
A
Well, they'll charge you again for the.
- [27:39]
C
They'll charge you for the things that are part of the subscription after you subscribe to it. So go make sure that you've canceled all of those.
- [27:45]
A
And if you do have a subscription to Final Cut, you probably should get the Creator Studio, right? That would save you money.
- [27:51]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Right now. Well, you've got. I think it's a month of free trial or I can't remember how long now I am.
- [28:00]
A
I don't think I'm going to subscribe to Creator Studio. I thought, when I heard about it, I thought, this is going to be great. By the way, I opened Pages and said, oh, you have 14.5. You really should upgrade to 15. That's the new version, of course. That's the Creator Studio version. It says we're not going to update this anymore. I'm sure that's true for all the other iWork apps. So it remains to be seen. I mean, I guess they'll continue to work. They won't ship with those old versions. They'll ship with the correct.
- [28:30]
C
The new version doesn't mean you have.
- [28:31]
A
To subscribe to Creator Studio, but it means you will be importuned to do so.
- [28:36]
B
Well, again, if you're used to using those iWork apps, whether you use them on a daily basis or whether you use them to just do monthly checkbook balancing or some sort of personal thing like that, or you double click a document and it happens to open in pages because that's what you have on your Mac, there's going to be a point of friction because it's not going to be available anymore in the way that you expected it to. Another thing about Creator Studio, just as a marketing thing that's kind of interesting to me, it feels like people who have the Adobe bundle may have some resistance to continuing with it because it's expensive and all that sort of stuff. But at the same time, as somebody who's been using Audition more regularly than Logic for the past several years, there is.
- [29:17]
A
Audition is Adobe's.
- [29:19]
B
Yes, it's an audio. That's audio.
- [29:21]
A
It's great.
- [29:22]
B
You could say the same thing about Photoshop or Illustrator, but as somebody who's been using those tools, my muscle memory says, okay, I'm an Adobe person. So if you're going to convert somebody to Creator Studio, you either have to be somebody, it feels like to me, who's like in the Final Cut or Logic universe and Therefore says, okay, I'm going to choose Apple's products over Adobe's products, or God forbid, they might have to have both if they're using Photoshop and Logic for some reason. And I just sort of wonder, like, is the goal to convert Adobe users to Creator Studio and convince them that all the tools that they have are there and that they're better? Because there are a lot of people who have issues with Adobe interfaces. But again, you get muscle memory. It's not that I love Audition, it's that I've learned how to use it and my muscle memory is such that I'm going to continue to use it, but to convert somebody over to a whole different set of tools, I don't know. It's an interesting question as to whether people are going to make the choice. Am I going to pick Apple or am I going to pick Adobe? Because each of them has a subscription. Apple's subscription is arguably a better value, but it kind of depends on what you need. Yeah, it depends on what you need, though if you're a Final Cut person, it probably makes absolute sense. Like that's feels like that's the people, the people who live at least to some extent in Final Cut and maybe Logic. But if you're kind of on the fence, I sort of wonder where you come down. Is cost enough reason for you to switch from an Adobe lifestyle to an Apple lifestyle?
- [30:47]
A
Yeah. And watch on Mac Break Weekly. It's so great to have you, Shelly Brisbane. Oh, it's so good to have you back. Of course, from Texas Standard Radio, Andy Inacco. And instead of Jason Snell, a little Micah Sargent. Always good to have Micah on the show. I miss working with you every week.
- [31:03]
C
But I know the tech guys.
- [31:06]
A
He moved away.
- [31:07]
C
Back at it in a long time.
- [31:08]
A
I can't even hang with you, man.
- [31:10]
C
So rainy here.
- [31:12]
A
I should mention. We've mentioned it last week. I'll mention it again. Christina Warren will be joining the panel in a couple of weeks. I think February 27th is. Or 22nd, end of the month, a couple more shows, which is great because we get a chance to see people like Shelley again and then. And I have a feeling Christina, now that she's working at GitHub, will take some time off from time to time, as does Jason, as I'm sure, Andy, you never take time off. I don't know why. You don't go anywhere, I guess.
- [31:42]
B
Well, I hope if you invite me back that I'll get to be on the same show with Christina. She's great, isn't she great? She's got a great panel.
- [31:48]
A
Yeah. Well good. You will deal. Okay, Deal. I promise you. Yeah, we're really thrilled to get Christina on. As you know, she was a long time at the ultimate Apple weblog tuaw. Then at Mashable, she hosted for a long time a really great podcast called Rocket. She has been at GitHub for a long time. Took a brief sojourn at Google's DeepMind. I wish I could get her to talk about that, but she seems quite secretive for some reason. That must have been something. But she went back to GitHub, which there's a story there I'm sure too. Anyway, Christina Warren will join us at the end of the month and we're very happy about that and we're happy that you're here on Mac Break Weekly. Is it a big story? I don't know that Apple has changed how you buy the Mac at the Apple Store. Remember it used to be choose your Mac and then there was some configuration stuff. Now it goes right to the configurator. So if I choose, let's say I'm going to buy my Mac Mini for my. It goes right to the Mac Mini. Did you see that? Let me go back again. All right, let's say I want to buy a MacBook Pro. It used to say pick one of these three models.
- [32:59]
C
Right? Right, right, right.
- [33:00]
A
Now it goes right into this full time configurator once you click the buy button and this is where you choose 14 or 16 inches. This is where you choose what kind of display, what kind of chip. Is that a big deal. It actually seems kind of sensible. Yeah.
- [33:18]
D
I mean there's been a lot of really interesting analysis. Think pieces about this. Like a lot of speculation. Oh well, I think this suggests that Apple knows that AI is going to be more important so people, their customers are going to want more direct control over how they configure this and get the features that they want. I think that it really does go to the simple thing of they're doing this because they did a whole bunch of testing and they believe that they will sell more Macs this way.
- [33:47]
A
Or sell more features maybe. Right? More sell.
- [33:49]
D
No. Well, basically make more money. Exactly. Make more money per device this way. And I think that's really is all there is to it.
- [33:58]
A
It's interesting they're still offering a Final Cut Pro license or a Logic Pro license when you buy a Mac Pro. That's interesting.
- [34:03]
C
That is kind of funny.
- [34:06]
A
When you.
- [34:07]
D
Get down to it. Again, if you go into the store here is a item in a box. Great. I'm going to take this box, put it in my cart and pay for it. As opposed to here is some parts, as opposed to going grocery shopping where it's like, oh, that's right, I need bread. I need a loaf of bread. It's like, ooh, this brand of peanut butter next to the bread is kind of nice. I should. You know what? I have never tried like a nice.
- [34:29]
A
Choose the drop down. Crunchy or smooth. Yeah, choose the drop down. Do you want sugar or no?
- [34:34]
D
Every single single thing is like a food pellet for the rat. Say, I want to know, I'm going to tap this bar and get this food pellet. Ooh, I want that food pellet too. But so that's what, that's why I'm certain that they did a whole bunch of testing and they really thought that we can increase revenue per sale, per checkout, if we basically give people not just one buying choice, but a series of buying choices while also giving them the idea that, oh, no, I'm taking more control over the configuration of my PC manufacturers.
- [35:05]
A
I just bought a Lenovo laptop and they did it. They do it. Probably they're influenced by Apple, the way Apple used to do it, where you go to the model, the thing you want and then it shows you some pre configuration with stuff. And then there's a button on some of them that says build it where you get more like the Apple choice now.
- [35:23]
B
Well, but even if you were pre configuring, you still had choices to make. So you would say you could buy a bigger hard drive, you could buy more memory.
- [35:31]
A
Yeah, you always had that configurator, didn't you?
- [35:33]
B
Right. And I think the thing I liked about it, and it still exists on the compare page, I liked it because you could sort of create a theoretical comparison between this MacBook Pro and that MacBook Pro in terms of price and chips and the like. And again, you can do that, but you have to go to the compare page explicitly, which is how I always did it for iPhones. Because whenever I'm on a iPhone podcast, the day new ones come out, I'm like, okay, I can't remember which one has this process.
- [35:57]
A
No one can.
- [35:57]
B
So you just compare three by three. But, but you're, you, you're not doing much more configuration that you did at the start. The only thing that I sort of find weird, I do have this sort of lens of if I'm explaining this to somebody who is not a Mac nerd and who's like, okay, I need a MacBook Pro, what do I do? The only thing that's odd to me is that if you're configuring your MacBook Pro, you choose 14 to 16 inches. Okay, I know what that means. Choose the M4 or the M5. Well, the M5 is faster. Okay, Now I have to choose how many cores and how many, how many cores I want. And for some people that's going to be a confusing choice. For people who are not computer experts, they're going to choose and it's not good, better best, which was the configurator gave you that good better best. And then you could add little bits to it. You could start out with good, but then you could say I want 80 gigs of RAM or whatever and make it something very different than what it started out to be. So now you have this more granular thing. As a, a somewhat novice or non tech Mac configurator, you might be confused by, well, not only do I have to choose the chip, but I have to choose the level of that particular chip plus all the other little things. I think it's not going to ultimately make that much of a difference. And I think Andy's right that it's obviously about selling more stuff per Mac. I don't think it sells more Macs, but it does sell more stuff per Mac, theoretically. Because every choice where you have the slower versus the faster, they're going to show you why the faster is better for you. And you if you think $200 or whatever the difference is is not that big a difference, you're going to go, yeah, why not? I mean I bought the M4 Pro Mac mini instead of the M4 Mac mini. They convinced me, I think I was going to do it anyway. But the more granular the choice, the more confusing it can be to some purchasers.
- [37:41]
A
I acknowledge we're probably overanalyzing this. Oh yeah, a lot of Kremlin ology. But I do think it kind of is an acknowledgement from Apple that the more that the people are buying Macs are, the more sophisticated audience. Because this is in my mind for a more sophisticated audience.
- [37:56]
B
And buying the Macs online as opposed to going into the Apple Store.
- [37:59]
D
Yeah.
- [37:59]
A
And the Apple Store.
- [38:00]
B
If you want a MacBook Pro and you go into the Apple Store, if you want a laptop and you go into the Apple Store and you go, hi, Apple genius person, what should I get? They're going to say, well, this one's bigger, this one has a screen option that you can get better screen. This one has more memory available to you and they're probably going to work you through those configurations whether they're the good, better, best version that we're used to online. So it's the same kind of thing. And they're going to certainly try and upsell you. If you say you want 16 gigs of RAM, they're going to tell you why 24 is better. So in, in a live context, they've been doing this for years.
- [38:36]
A
Apple's. You mentioned this a little bit or alluded to it. Andy. Apple's second biggest acquisition ever is an AI company according to the Financial Times, $2 billion. That's second only to the Beats acquisition for Q AI, which is pretty speculative. It's an AI audio startup that uses facial expressions to understand you. It's silent speech.
- [39:06]
D
What?
- [39:07]
A
It sounds really. It's weird.
- [39:10]
D
Well, no, this was a Google Ventures startup, so Google's probably happy that they got that check. But the it is one of those it is not like Beats where you say, oh, I understand. They want more consumer oriented rather than technology oriented headphones and earbuds. This is a core technology again based on micro expressions that it can see off of a human face to speculatively, people are saying, well, that will help you recognize speech because it's going not just by the sound, but also by what are the mechanics of what is the face doing, but also the idea of what can we do for control of a device via facial expressions, obviously for a $2 billion check. They feel as though this is a fundamental technology the team has, which will of course now be Apple employees, goes back a long, long way. This is actually the second company that the CEO has led and then sold Apple. The previous generations of this guy's technology was the Xbox Kinect sensor. So he's been working on this technology for years and years and years and years. But yeah, it's dazzling when you have that big of a check for something that is such a broad idea, such a broad thing. It really does make you speculate, well, gee, if Apple is coming up with a wearable, let's not think about how accurately it could read lips. Let's think about does that mean that. That I can just go and suddenly it's actually. It's ordering lunch for me and picking up a. And hiring Uber for me.
- [40:53]
A
My take on this is it's a talent acquisition that these are machine learning experts and they will be applying their skills to a different technology. Because unless. Okay, here's the. Okay, you really want to. The Conspiracy theory is this will help you with ad sales. If I can use the turn on the camera and see how people are reacting to my ads, I can target.
- [41:17]
C
My thought was that little Pixar lamp robot dealy Bob that they were talking about working on.
- [41:23]
A
It's not reliable enough for me, Mike, to look at you. I mean we do it as humans, but it's not a reliable signal to look at you. How many times do you get in a conversation where you go what?
- [41:35]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [41:37]
A
Are you mad at me?
- [41:38]
D
Yeah. What did I say?
- [41:38]
A
We don't, we're not sure exactly. We see it, we sense it, but we're not sure exactly. I don't think that's a reliable enough signal for machine learning to work off of.
- [41:48]
D
So a third possibility is that they just feel as though it's patent. In addition to having lots of people say this patent portfolio is so valuable that, that we would like to own it. Not necessarily because we would like to build products that are enhanced by these patents, but that means that we have an arsenal of no matter what we do for the next five or 10 years, we can basically say no, no, no, we own the patent to the that sort of technology. You can't sue us about this or you can't block us or modify what we're going to do about it. So oftentimes the value of patents is often tactical as opposed to strategic. I'm sorry, strategic rather than tactical. I'm sorry, I get those two.
- [42:28]
A
I'm going to vote for. It's a talent acquisition entirely. That the technology itself is probably not that interesting, but maybe we'll see.
- [42:34]
B
The other thing about patents and every once in a while you get some leak of a patent filing and people are quick to jump to how that patent filing is going to lead to a specific product in six months, which is ridiculous. And so I am not as skeptical about the technology itself and I don't even think it needs to be taken entirely literally because even if you say on its face, facial expressions are not precise enough, I think there is a way that that kind of technology, if it's far enough along, could be applied and could be combined with gestures or some other more definitive indication of what one wants to do. I'll also say that it's great for accessibility for somebody who has speech difficulties or physical motor disabilities. And I love the idea that in all or in parts, probably in part could be applied to some sort of accessibility based head worn interface. I love that idea.
- [43:32]
A
Yeah, but does, but does the average person want a camera on them all the time and their computer analyzing their expressions.
- [43:39]
B
I mean, does the average person want a lot of things? I don't necessarily think that's the case. With that. I agree. And the technology and I hadn't thought of the ad. That's diabolical, the idea that my mind went there.
- [43:53]
A
I'm sorry. Yeah, well, and let's remember that Apple has had a huge brain drain in their AI and machine learning talent. Everybody's leaving. I mean every week mark Gurman's got four more people going to OpenAI or Met Data. So Apple's looking anywhere it can. $2 billion sounds like a lot of money. It's certainly a lot of money for a technology as speculative as this. QAI has no demos, they have no videos of demos. But maybe it's not too much if you get a team of four or five really good AI experts or machine.
- [44:29]
B
Learning experts and you can put them under very long term contracts or some.
- [44:33]
A
Well, that's why you have to pay a lot of money, right?
- [44:35]
B
Exactly.
- [44:35]
A
That's what Mark Zuckerberg's paying, paying, you know, that's what it costs nowadays. Yeah.
- [44:40]
D
$2 billion though.
- [44:41]
A
That's a lot of money.
- [44:42]
D
I'm not skeptical. I'm saying I, this is where I have to throw up my hands of saying I don't know what to think because every time I think that, oh well, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, you keep hitting it $2 billion. So Apple had a lot of reason to think that this is going to be, this is going to work out great for the company. And I at 2 billion.
- [44:59]
A
How much did I pay Andrea though? That was more than that.
- [45:02]
D
Yeah.
- [45:03]
A
For one guy.
- [45:04]
B
Guy.
- [45:04]
D
I can't remember. I can't remember. But it wasn't $2 billion.
- [45:07]
A
20 billion a year, something like that. Didn't we see that number 20 sounds like.
- [45:15]
D
That'S okay.
- [45:16]
B
Maybe it wasn't a year, maybe it was over multiple years.
- [45:19]
A
Yeah.
- [45:20]
B
And presumably the quote unquote, one guy has got a team. I mean it's, I, I would doubt that it's one guy driving over in his Maserati. He's probably got some folks with him also.
- [45:29]
D
But also with Jan Dream a Apple, you have, you have a company, you have a company that says we were caught flat footed by AI. We have next to nothing going on in AI. We have the opportunity to buy the head of AI at the, at the company that is from Google who is right now basically invented all of the AI that all the tools being used right now are based off of. Yes, of course we're going to haul out our checkbook to basically buy our way into having an AI department that can actually compete. That's.
- [46:02]
B
And get the investors to chill out. So whatever the actual outcome of it, if a lot of this is about getting the investors to chill out, then you know, there might be some value in spending even larger.
- [46:14]
A
20 million a year. Sorry about that.
- [46:16]
C
20 million, that sounds realistic.
- [46:18]
A
Yeah, well, it's funny how that we have inflation because if you told me you were going to pay me $20 million a year to do anything, I would be. Yeah, that seems fair. That's a lot of money for one person. But so yeah, you're right. Two billion. But if you got 50 people for two billion, the Costco bulk pack. Okay, yeah, that's right.
- [46:41]
B
I got a bulk pack pallet full of AI.
- [46:43]
A
You know who Apple did get, which is really interesting, is an AI company.
- [46:47]
D
And one of those fried chickens that they like so much.
- [46:50]
A
Sebastian DeWitt has moved from Halide. He was the co founder of this great camera app. Remember all his great blog posts about how Apple's camera worked and all that? Founder of Halide and Lux. He is joining now this is weird. Apple's human interface design team. He's going as a designer, not as a technologist. He worked as a freelancer for apple according to 9 to 5 Mac on find my Mobile, Me and Icloud. But again, he's not going as a developer, he's going in design. He did lead design for Halide and did a very nice job. So.
- [47:29]
D
Yeah, and the company was eager to point out that. Well, yeah, that doesn't mean that our company's going away. As a matter of fact, they had a blog post that really outlined an ambitious and intriguing new direction that they're developing a brand new image pipeline that is kind of. They want to continue to make the brand of this app that. This is the professional camera for stills. This is the no AI version of it. This is a pipeline that is designed to make sure that if you want deep, deep, deep shadows, you will get deep, deep, deep shadows with this pipeline that we have as opposed to every computational model which is say no, look, there must be some detail we can get out of there. Let's not have the number of times. Most of the times I've been super disappointed by phone cameras when I've stopped at sunset and the street lamp is making these beautiful shadows against the wall, like wow, that's just such punchy blacks. And I want to Save this. And then I get looking at my laptop.
- [48:26]
A
Oh.
- [48:26]
D
So basically instead of these beautiful dark blacks, I've got this gray mush that kind of shows the bricks in the wall. Okay. No way to interpret my artistic.
- [48:35]
A
So Haylide Lux says that losing Sebastian DeWitt is not a big deal.
- [48:39]
D
Yeah.
- [48:40]
A
Okay. He actually came from a design background, I guess so I didn't know that. And he's a mighty good looking fellow, so that's good too.
- [48:52]
D
When you think about it, if he is a design guy and not a camera guy, you know, you can either spend the next 10 years having opportunities to improve the design of this one app, or you can improve the design of all apps for one of the most culturally significant sets of platforms on the planet.
- [49:08]
C
It is hard to say no to that. Absolutely. Yeah, it's absolutely hard to say no to that.
- [49:13]
A
Apple getting a lot of heat for telling Patreon creators, we're going to take 30% of your of your donations. You don't mind that we're going to do it November 1st. Patreon has said, look, switch, do you know, if you're a donor to a creator, do it on the Patreon website, not through the App Store's in app purchase system. I'm surprised actually that Apple hadn't been taking that cut.
- [49:42]
C
I guess I will be honest, I was surprised about that too. When I read this, I thought, oh wait, that's new. New, it doesn't surprise me.
- [49:51]
A
Is absolutely rent seeking though, isn't it? I mean, Apple had nothing to do.
- [49:55]
C
It didn't need to. Yeah, I didn't need to.
- [49:58]
B
Well, and it's an opportunity for creators to say things like please buy on the websites and please donate to us on the website instead of through Apple. So it is another opportunity to ding Apple as a, as a creator who wants to get support from their, their Patreon patrons. And, and it just, it seems, seems greedy and it seems like it creates negativity on Apple that Apple doesn't need. I mean, why, why do that?
- [50:23]
A
Apparently, according to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators use the in app purchase.
- [50:29]
B
I mean that's, that's an interesting statistic to me because my, yeah, my first thought when I saw that was, as Micah said, I'm surprised they didn't do it. But I also wonder how many people donate through apps. Patreon app, like I don't use the Patreon. Like if I'm going to donate to somebody, I'm probably going to find the link on the Website on the website and they may direct me to the. I'm not going to manage that subscription in the Patreon app. I don't know what advantage there is for me unless I guess if I'm managing multiple things that I'm a Patreon of, then I can, you know, manage my spending or whatever within the app. That would be the advantage for me as a consumer. But I personally don't do that. I've never done it.
- [51:09]
D
Yeah, I'll be honest with you.
- [51:10]
C
I didn't really know they had an.
- [51:12]
A
App on my phone. It's a terrible app.
- [51:16]
D
I removed it from my phone because it was just so horrible. Even on my phone, accessing it through the web is 10 times better because it puts the focus on all the cartoonists that I want who's. Oh wow. Danielle Casero has a new. It's Friday so she has a new set of cartoons. That's what I'm there for. Not to see recommendations, not to see things that's being pushed happening. I mean I don't. Like I said it was despicable because this is. I've always thought that the App Store is, is Apple's personality when it drinks. Okay. It's the one area where I don't know why you run this so Mr.
- [51:51]
A
Hyde to its Dr. Jekyll. Is that what you're saying?
- [51:54]
D
It's just like I can't. And if I'm going to sift some good news to talk about Apple about this is that the big news is that they're extending the deadline for complying for featuring doing this. It used to be a few months earlier and they extended it to November but now that's it. The thing is when this comes comes up in other situations about the 30% tariff so to speak, I just keep saying. Okay, again, Danielle Corsetto is doing five beautiful, beautiful hand painted cartoons a week and posting it. How are you entitled to 30% of her money for all the work? Are you saying that. Well of course we are responsible for a third of her success. Like no, you're not. You had nothing to do with anything there. You're just basically saying that anytime there's any money that crosses hands, I need to wet my beak a little. And that is basically in every mob movie directed by Martin Scorsese you have ever seen.
- [52:46]
B
Yeah, well, right. And. And nobody is depending on the app as the vehicle for consuming those cartoons. I mean I guess you could, but you're going to consume them on the web or if there are a lot of People who have extra podcast content or extra video content that is available through their Patreon page. But I, unless that app is a particularly desirable means of either, either watching that stuff or aggregating it in some way, what's the benefit to the people who are actually the patrons, never mind the people who are getting ripped off?
- [53:15]
D
Yeah, I just, I just think that in principle someone, there should be some sort of movement inside Apple to say, wait a minute, are we really saying we. I can understand why we're saying that. While we're saying that we've developed these APIs, we developed this for this marketplace, we developed this app store and we are deserve, and in many cases we are worthy of a 30% cut. The fact, are we really going to go so hard to the wall that anytime any money transacts at all, we deserve, we have earned 30% of that. Even when all you're doing is saying that, yeah, you know this comic book that you want to buy through the Kindle app. Yeah, we deserve 30% of that. We're going to make sure there's no profit margin whatsoever. We want to take it all, like, again, what did you do to earn the 30%? And I'm glad there are ways around it. Again, I'm totally on your, I'm totally with you, Shelley. Like, again, this does not affect me at all.
- [54:05]
B
All.
- [54:05]
D
And fortunately, all the creators on Patreon have enough of an advanced notice to appeal to their users directly and basically make that messaging that please, please, please don't sign up through the app. Please, please, please sign up through the web because I will get more money off of it that way. But I just think in principle that this is not a good look for Apple ever.
- [54:28]
B
And there's a way for creators to message that that will get the users to understand, like, it's very easy to make pithy messaging that says, let us keep the money that you want to contribute to us and also boo Apple. And that's why I think it's dumb that Apple's doing it because I think it would be very easy and almost necessary for a creator who's trying to preserve their 30%. They have to ding Apple. They have to say, Apple is trying to pick our pocket. Which means they're picking your pocket rocket. Come on over and do it via the website.
- [55:00]
A
Proton has a very interesting website they call Tech Finds Tracker. Big tech, small consequences. Proton, of course, the Swiss based software company that does protonmail and so many other applications. Their point is that these fines are such a small percentage of the overall revenue of these companies that they're meaningless. Proton says that Apple last year, this did not show up in Apple's quarterly earnings report. Paid $851 million for privacy and antitrust violations, but that was down from 2.1 billion the year before. So that's good news. Proton also points out it would take Apple at its current run rate, three days, three hours and 28 minutes to pay off the 851 million.
- [55:50]
B
So the amount of fines is about equal to the amount of money they just paid. Paid for Qai. So it takes me three hours and 28 minutes to make that back.
- [55:58]
A
That was in 2024.
- [55:59]
B
I know, I know.
- [56:00]
A
Exactly, exactly. Two million is not the same to you and me as it is to Apple. It's cushion change for Apple. So anyway, I did not know about this site, but it's a good site to kind of keep an eye on. And it's also graphically great. They show that Google's fines last year were 4.24 billion. But that's again, just a fraction of the total amount they make. The fines are growing meta. Only 228 million last year. Amazon 2.5 billion. Google 4.24 billion. But again, look at the stack of coins that Google has. It's a cost of doing business. You put that in there with the rest of lunches for the employees and things like that.
- [56:49]
D
At the end of the day, there are some poison pills inside of these regulations where they could, where it's like, hey, 10% of all worldwide revenue. But the thing is, Google and Apple, particularly Facebook too, they're too big to regulate. Because if they really, really wanted to say, look, we're sick of this. We're sick of you flouting our laws. We're sick of you saying that, no, go ahead, find us whatever you want. We'll either pay it or we will just not pay it. What are you going to do? Ban Gmail from your entire country? Country? What are you going to do? Make the iPhone not work in your entire country? We don't think you're going to do that. So let's negotiate to something that we think that we can tolerate.
- [57:30]
A
The 851 million came from four different fines. In February, South Korea fined Apple 3.2 million. Again, chump change for data illegally obtained without users consent. France, 162 million. Now we're talking some money for violating privacy laws. The EU at large, 571 million for breaching DMA rules for the App Store. I think, though, all of these are on appeal. I don't know if they actually. Any money changed?
- [58:01]
C
Has it been paid or is it.
- [58:03]
A
Yeah, I don't think so. Italy 115 million for abusing. For Apple abusing its dominant app store position. So for two for privacy and two for the apps.
- [58:13]
D
Proving once again that a duopoly is not freedom of choice.
- [58:15]
B
Choice.
- [58:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. No fines from the United States of America. I might point out because we love our Apple. There's a great Picture of Sebastian DeWitt. I was looking for that good looking fellow. He should be in the movies.
- [58:33]
B
Apple Leo's got a crush.
- [58:35]
A
I do have a little pay cut. He's a good looking guy. Camo is suing Apple Apple for Sherlocking them with Continuity Cam. I really like camo. I use camo. Lisa's borrowing my laptop because her screen cracked and so her laptop's at the Apple Store and when she first logged on to Google Meet or Zoom, there was no picture and she said, what's going on? I said, let me look. Oh, you're on camo, but you don't have a camo camera attached. So Camo was before Continuity Camera a great way for using your iPhone. I still use it as your camera. Continuity doesn't have all of the features. Reincubate, the company that does Camo, has accused Apple of copying its technology. This took a long time. Continuity camera came out 2022.
- [59:29]
C
Yeah, that's the thing that surprised me the most about this is how long it's taken for this to happen. I wonder if Reincubate was sort of working through whether this is something that they would even have grounds for. I've spoken to one of the founders of the company quite a few times back when the pandemic was going on. Matthew Casanelli and I both talked about Camo when it was in its earlier days and ended up talking to again the CEO of the company. And he. I kind of was curious whenever Continuity Camera came out. I asked him, you know, what's. And for him he mentioned that he has always felt like it was its own entity and because of the extra tools that it provides, the extra features that it provides and the fact that it works across platforms as well made it unique enough to where it had its own standing. And I kind of wondered though that despite that, how long would it take for sales to be impacted by Apple's own Continuity camera? And I wonder if it's just gotten to that point as well as more.
- [60:41]
B
Devices support Continuity Camera. They didn't necessarily. When it first came out.
- [60:45]
D
Yeah, there's a blog post that kind of goes into it. They're basically saying that when they got Sherlocked, they had a very, very intimate relationship with Apple that they actually go into a little bit of the history essentially saying that, look, a lot of our beta users were at Apple. They had thousands of users inside Apple. They're encouraging us. They gave us, they gave us some exposure during the keynote during 2022 WWDC, all this sort of stuff. And so, and when it happened, there was a lot of behind the scenes communication between Camo and Apple about hey, what the hell, man? And a lot of sympathy and hey, stick tight. We're talking about it, we're trying to figure something out. And implied in the blog post was that one of the things they're considering is, well, what if we just buy you out and solve this problem and do all this sort of stuff? And so basically after two years they basically, the author of the blog post is saying that, well, we feel now as though that they were just trying to get us to shut up and go away. And so at this point we are basically trying to defend our patents ensuing. But yeah, that's.
- [61:54]
B
Well, it reminds me of Massimo because part of that issue was that Massimo and Apple had talked about the technology that ended up being the blood oxygen in the watch. And so Massimo was saying Apple stole from them because they had access to their stuff. So if in fact these Camo and Apple were talking, then you could see that there would be more either opportunity for a lawsuit because, oh, we can prove that there were conversations even if they weren't at the time, as acrimonious as they presumably are now. And I don't, I have no personal relationship with the Camel people at all and I don't want to cast aspersions on them. But having, you know, a rich company like Apple is going to attract those who will, you know, attempt to get money from them either because they've legitimately been economically harmed or because it's a target of opportunity. And I, again, I don't want to say that that is what's happening. It might not be. They may very. Camel may very well have an absolute rock solid case. I don't know that either. But you know, that money is very tempting and Apple has a lot of it.
- [62:57]
A
It may well be that, you know, Camo was doing all right until recently and then suddenly sales completely.
- [63:04]
B
Well, right. And that's kind of their point. It's like, look, we've, we've been economically harmed. We made this product that used to be needed by a lot of people who didn't have access to something called continuity camera and now we don't because continuity cameras everywhere.
- [63:18]
D
Yeah.
- [63:18]
A
Well here's one way to make money if you've got an old Apple one prototype board lying around.
- [63:25]
B
Oh right over here.
- [63:28]
A
It's called the Quote Celebration board. Sold for $2.7 million. It is such an early prototype. I love the description actually if you read it from RR Auctions it's such an early prototype and the way they know it's a pre bite shop order. Remember the first big order for the Apple one was from Paul Terrell's Byte Shop shop. And Steve and was walked in without shoes on and said man, you want to buy this? He said well yeah, if you can assemble 50 of them. Well this predates this. And one of the reasons they know it is because it used a unique mix of hand soldered components sourced locally for testing rather than from their later standardized purchasing like and this is meaningless to me but I think Burke will understand it. Two common silver Sprague 39D capacitors. Not computer rated but easily available at a radio replacement repair shop. It also has some unique modifications to the 74123 timing circuit consistent with the diagnosis of timing issues before full scale production. And there's I think a beard hair from Wozniak in one of the solders. No, I'm making that up. I'm making that what they do is they go, they go to this guy, there's a guy who evaluates these Corey Cohen one and makes reports on them based on what he sees on it which demonstrates that it is in fact that it must have been in fact one of the very first Apple one prototype boards. So somebody thought that was really super valuable.
- [65:08]
D
Yeah, there's a lot of money in the tech space and a lot of people who were like children in the 80s and you think that people are willing to spend. Wow, that's silly. You're spending $250 for a he man figure that you had when you kid. Yeah, how about $2 million for the computer that you wish that you read about it was part of the Apple engine. I mean Apple ones were always, were always like through the roof valuable. I still remember back in the eighties in Byte magazine had classified section even back then where nobody, when an apple one was maybe 10 years old and really not part of anybody's childhood per se, say someone had one listed for $10,000 in the mid to late 80s and that was in itself pretty astronomical.
- [65:56]
A
This was part of we talked about it last week or the week before that. Steve Jobs personal effects like his clip auction, like his clip on bow ties and stuff. But they ended up raising $8 million for this stuff. The other thing that sold for a lot of money was the very first check written by Steve and Woz. And Steve and Woz Both signed it $500 check before Apple was even incorporated. It's dated 3-16-1976 and it sold for $2.4 million a piece of paper.
- [66:31]
D
Was it the autographs? Was it the historical significance? And is this just going to go on somebody's yachts, the wall of somebody's yacht? Or is this a historical document that is going to be kind of loaned out to museums? And the way that fine art is loaned out, I hope it's the latter because there are a lot of people that like to see that tactical evidence of history. Apple historically has not been terribly interested in preserving or celebrating its history. They used to have actual history, I think a history department. And then when Steve Jobs came back the second time said yeah we're not doing that anymore, go away. But these artifacts are actually this is part of not only tech history, but American cultural history. And in one argument world cultural history. And these things need to be preserved and these things need to be accessible to researchers and people who are just interested.
- [67:20]
A
Well I don't know why anybody have spent $113,000 for six of Steve's own pre owned clip on bow ties, but somebody did.
- [67:28]
B
Yeah, that makes less sense. Like I can see this, the Apple one board in the executive office. Some tech company. I'm not saying it's worth it, I'm just saying I can say see it.
- [67:39]
D
I can put it.
- [67:40]
B
Yeah, the executive offices and they put a nice light behind it and you can see it.
- [67:43]
A
The cheapest thing you could get. Maybe, maybe I would buy this. I don't know. I could afford it I guess. Steve Jobs personally owned Apple One computer ribbon cable went for 3,000.
- [67:55]
B
So they took an Apple One apart and they sold it piece by piece.
- [67:59]
A
Steve Jobs personally owned. I don't know if it's signed. I don't know if his DNA is.
- [68:05]
B
Like they found found it like in a basket in his office or something.
- [68:09]
A
Well this, by the way we were talking about this, I think the provenance of all this is it was like from like Steve's house like when he was his childhood home, his Joan Baez 8 tracks went for $6,250 and his bedroom desk $81,000.
- [68:32]
D
I would like to think that the provenance of that ribbon cable, if it actually, actually goes from like an adult Steve Jobs history, is that some underling had that thrown at their head by Steve in a fit of anger. And then Steve yelled on her to pick that damn thing up off the floor because it's garbage. And he put it in his pocket and now he's got a little bit of payback.
- [68:53]
A
The Apple garage, which I guess was untouched for years. And so the owners of the Apple garage, there's the ribbon cable, by the way, and the auction house assures you, you it's. What do they call it? It's in fine good to fine cabinet.
- [69:06]
B
I'm just imagining them dismantling it item by item. And now they're getting down to the cables. For a while it was, you know, hard drive enclosures. Well, not even hard. That would have been too long ago, but you know, something bigger. And then all of a sudden they go down to, you know, from dot matrix printers all the way down to ribbon cables.
- [69:23]
A
It's amazing that somebody bought it for $3,000. But, you know, some people have disposable.
- [69:31]
C
Maximum is a piece of history like.
- [69:32]
A
The mad switch did for Apple. It's not, you know, it's maybe probably for some rich enough, you know, Elon Musk, it's a second worth of earnings or something.
- [69:43]
B
But they see then that person is going to pass on and their descendants are going to go, well, what do I do with this ribbon?
- [69:49]
C
Kid does not throw this away. I don't even know what this is.
- [69:52]
A
Throw it away. It will be thrown away.
- [69:55]
C
That's rough.
- [69:57]
A
You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inocco is here. Micah Sargent filling in for Jason Snell. And it's wonderful to have Shelley Bradley Brisbane back from Texas Standard Radio. What were the big stories this morning on Texas Standard Radio?
- [70:10]
B
Oh, well, let's see. It's very hot in Texas prisons and there are no standards to regulate it, even though there are standards to regulate the heat in county jails. So we did a lot of data analysis.
- [70:21]
A
So what you're saying is commit a misdemeanor because if you do a felony.
- [70:25]
B
Right, you're going to be very warm in the summertime. A lot of data analysis of about which prisons are the hottest. So I suppose if you wanted to choose, if you were able to choose the prison you went to based on its heat, I don't know.
- [70:38]
C
I shouldn't be.
- [70:38]
A
Is it colder in the winter? It's not hot now, is it?
- [70:41]
B
Let's see. Andy was Talking before the show about it was just hitting freezing in his area and I was checking. We were at 67 degrees today. We actually did have some very cold weather last week. We had ice, not snow, but we had freezing rain, which meant the entire city. City kind of went crazy and didn't know what to do. Nobody drove anywhere for like two days and the schools were closed. But now it happens here in the.
- [71:04]
A
First rain of the season. Everybody, it's like they forgot everything they knew about Shelley.
- [71:10]
D
I. I think I'd almost prefer that because in New England, because we get these. I mean, you know, Texas. Texas is not expected to be able to deal with that because you almost really get it in New England. It's like, oh, wow, bummer. So you got like 14 to 18 inches for your. Oh, well. So you'll be at the office an hour late. Should I say let's. Let's say a half hour late? Hour late. If you're really, really. It's like, ah, damn it, I got a shovel.
- [71:34]
A
I got a. We. We got 62 degrees under sunny skies going up to 67 later this afternoon. A good Tuesday.
- [71:40]
B
Oh, it's the weather. It's the radio guy coming back. Life.
- [71:44]
C
There he is.
- [71:45]
A
And that's your back break. Weekly weather report. Traffic on the eights coming up. All right, on we go with. Actually, it's rumored to time a lot of rumors. I am excited about the I think I probably will buy the iPhone fold. We now see the specs and people seem to agree, at least all the Mac blogs that these are pretty credible. So I will. This is from YBO Instant Digital, the leaker. The volume buttons are not on the left side. What do we do? What do we do? Are instead placed directly on the top right side of the device similar to the volume button placement on the iPad mini, which will challenge users iPhone usage.
- [72:31]
D
Habits, iPad style layout. And basically they're attributing that to the fact that. Okay, so the logic board is on the right side, not on the left side. So they have to put all those physical controls.
- [72:41]
A
That makes sense. And it would be. It is in my mind. I hope I'm right. I'm thinking of it as a iPad that folds up into a phone, not a phone that unfolds into an iPad.
- [72:50]
D
That's going to be the weird thing though, because when this was more speculative, when we knew that they were working on it, to try to actually ship this sometime in 2025 or 2026 or 2027, like, that's like, gee, wouldn't it be great to have something that's kind of like the Samsung fold, where it, like it unfolds into a kind of a substantial like tablet sort of experience. And now we're getting more, we're getting closer and closer to actual like the predicted ship date. It feels like it's going to be more of a passport size. And now it's like that's kind of changed how excited I get because I've seen devices like that and like, it's fine, it's great. I don't know if, I don't know if it's enough of a transformation of experience to make me feel as though if I were, if I were shopping for a new phone with a 2000, $2300 budget, if I would think that, yeah, that's enough of a transformation that, yeah, I definitely want to spend more money for that rather than getting an absolutely maximum styled iPhone 18 Pro with a calfskin horween leather case and all the other accessories.
- [73:56]
A
Let me continue with the Weibo wumas. The power button integrated with touch ID and the AI button, camera button are still on the right side as you said, Andy. The speculation is because the motherboard's there and they didn't want to run wires across left side completely free of physical button buttons. Wibo Woomers says this results in the iPhone with the largest battery capacity ever. You got a lot of real estate to put a battery in there. Single punch hole, front camera design smaller and cleaner. Active area cutout. The rear dual cameras, microphone and flash are arranged horizontally on the right side. The module appears to have a completely black base, not matching the body color. Currently white is the only color confirmed. Two other colorways are expected to be announced on release. That's the full Weibo WUMA report. We'll have traffic on the eights coming up. So, you know, again, it's just a rumor, but we are getting into that time frame where they're probably starting going to start to. At least they have prototypes and a.
- [75:05]
D
Lot of these rumors are sort of are coordinating with each or rather sort of intersecting with each other. We've been hearing Ming Chi Kuo and a bunch of other like, like panel supply chain analysts talk about this for the past couple of years. We're seeing a lot of. Oh, well, yeah, that makes sense. Yes, we've, we've confirmed this. There's still a lot of, there's still a lot of excitement. Like I'm wondering just simple things like how does Apple anticipate people using this and are they Going to lock people into it is either a closed phone or it is an open tablet sort of thing. Like are they going to let you do sort of the. One of the nicest things about this sort of design is that you could do things like have a video player or a chat app like facetime where you have it sitting flat like on the table and the top half of the screen is giving you your actual video and has the camera embedded in it. But the top that's like flat on the surface is actually your control. So you can hit a mute button, you can hit a volume button. Is Apple going to give developers modes like that or are they going to say nope, it's easy either completely closed or it's completely open. There is no in between to take advantage of.
- [76:08]
A
Do you think they'll do the iPad OS on it or a modified iPhone OS or just straight up iPhone iOS on it?
- [76:16]
D
It'd be a shame if you open it up and you can't use it as something like a tablet. I can't imagine justifying that expense by saying, well, it's a phone with the biggest screen we've ever put on an iOS that's not. That's going to be a super productivity device.
- [76:29]
B
Even though there are things about the IPADOs that are not ideal, including the. I mean the windows make it better, better. But I don't know that I really want to mess around with windowing on, on a phone and then the sort of multi column approach. I think IPADOS is still inferior to iOS. I'm open to sort of seeing what they do, but iOS is kind of the gold standard and I guess I wonder whether they would go out from iOS and add a few IPados features to take advantage of the real estate rather than trying to, you know, make IPADOs work for I phone.
- [77:01]
D
You think maybe they would, they would make it ipados oriented so to speak, but nonetheless basically say, well, you can't do multi windowing. You can do split view and slide over stuff like that.
- [77:13]
C
IPados light.
- [77:14]
B
I wonder about that. Yeah, that. I mean that might make sense. I also want to. I also just want to iPad OS. I also just wanted to add my futile complaint about the volume buttons on the top. I don't like it. Doesn't mean that that's not going to happen.
- [77:30]
A
I mean, I don't like it.
- [77:31]
D
I'm with you.
- [77:31]
A
I don't like it.
- [77:32]
B
E. I'm not a fan of it. I mean my, you know, visual aids here. I'm, I'm reaching over with my Other hand to the top or I have to go up like this. There are going to be some people who will be converting to the assistive touch accessibility feature to manage volume as opposed to trying to, you know, get up to the top. I think for some people with motor disabilities it's going to be an issue. But even if you don't have a motor disability. I'm used to having the volume buttons under my thumb and used to is the operative word. Of course. I don't know how much of it is being used to it and how much of it is being. This is just really inconvenient. It doesn't make sense because I've never had a phone with volume buttons on the top of any kind. Way back to flip phones, volume buttons belong on the side. So we'll just see how people take to that.
- [78:14]
A
Yeah, well, there's also a rumor, I don't know how credible this one is, that Apple's going to do another folding phone just as Samsung has a phone. I've got a, I've got a product demo somewhere. Well, I put it somewhere. It's a Galaxy 7, 8 soon to come out that folds like the iPhone sort of will. They're gonna do a flip phone. They like the Galaxy Flip. Yeah. What do you think?
- [78:40]
C
I think I would go for an iPhone flip phone. I really do. Because. Okay, look, I don't know about you all, but the number of people to whom I have spoken, spoken, who were born at the end of the 90s. Okay, so like 97.
- [79:02]
B
I don't know people. Actually I do know some of my.
- [79:04]
A
Nieces, four years old now.
- [79:05]
D
What is this exactly?
- [79:07]
C
The number of people I've spoken to who come at the end of the 90s who a, call themselves 90s kids, but also B, live in the nostalgia of the 90s. A back to me. I get annoyed by that because they're not actual 90s kids. But the point is, I'm telling you, nostalgia is a very powerful thing. And also, what is the word? Delusional. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing. And so you have no idea the number of influencers that you're going to see with flip iPhones. If they are this sort of new. New but old method of flipping from the top.
- [79:42]
A
I'm telling you that I bought the Galaxy Flip cause I too thought, oh, that's what I want. I want a smaller phone. Not a, not a regular phone that opens to a bigger thing. But I've kind of put it by the wayside. Cause I don't really use it and I don't really use the sound Samsung Fold either because it's Android. And I really think that what will be compelling is a iPad that folds up into a phone, but you want the phone that folds into a smaller phone. Okay. Did the flip sell well? I can't. I don't know. I don't remember.
- [80:12]
C
I actually don't know if it sold well. I don't know.
- [80:14]
B
Well, then you've got to make more modifications to iOS. You're going to have less.
- [80:19]
A
Right.
- [80:19]
B
You're going to have more difficulty porting. You can have the iPad OS versus iOS argument. But if it's a vertical flip phone, that's going to be a different. I mean, for instance, one of the.
- [80:29]
A
Things that Samsung Flip does is it's smart about whether it's half folded. So apps will actually take the top half of the screen and then use the bottom half for the keyboard. You have to redesign stuff.
- [80:42]
D
Yeah, not necessarily. I mean, Apple could make a commitment. I think it would be a compelling product. I'm with you, Micah. One of the things that Apple does extremely well is that they just really good at developing as developing an object that is very, very satisfying as a physical object. And the idea of having a phone which is Again, in the 30s, 40s and 50s, people took great pride in what cigarette case they had and what lighter they had and what fountain pen they had. The phone is now that exact same thing. It is something that you have on your dresser and you pick it up and the first thing you get and the idea of having not this bar thing that has a glass screen on the outside, the you have to kind of keep protected. But the idea of no, here's this beautiful little folding thing that I can slip not just in sort of the biggest pocket that I've got available to me or the choose a purse based on can I fit this phone in here? But here is something the size of a compact that I can just simply bury inside it is good for lady pockets.
- [81:37]
B
It's absolutely great for lady pockets.
- [81:39]
D
And the flash of I'm going to flip it open to make a call, then I'm going to flip it closed. It's done. It doesn't necessarily have to have multiple modes. When it is open it it is simply an iPhone. When it is closed, it is simply an object that I think the way that I would imagine it would be kind of like what Samsung did, which is there is a supplemental OLED screen on the outside that is simply giving you like a Watchos sort of widget. Experience that you can choose and when you want to take selfies or take pictures. Yeah, it will give you the selfie camera. So it would be an interesting way if Apple were to really prosecute this concept. The idea of what if you had a phone that you could use without necessarily having to open, open it and be distracted by everything that a huge regular multi touch smartphone surface gives you.
- [82:28]
B
See that's what I want a folding phone for. That is the only reason I want a folding phone so I can have an outside screen like that.
- [82:35]
A
Well, we'll see. It's from Mark Gurman and he says that Apple tested a bunch of different form factors before they settled on the larger folder form. But now, now they're reconsidering a clamshell foldable. The information also said they had some prototypes. Gurman points out the product is far from guaranteed to reach the market. So it's just something they're thinking about. They probably watch with interest. You know, Samsung announced that their tri fold, they have a trifold is going to be 2899. It's going to be almost $3,000. So remember, it costs more to make these things or not it costs more.
- [83:19]
C
And then I feel like the people who have them barely use them.
- [83:22]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [83:23]
C
I don't see a lot of people accepting.
- [83:26]
A
I think it's for, I can't even find mine.
- [83:27]
D
I think it's for the $2 million Apple check crowd where this is not going to be my primary phone. I can. God, God bless, God bless, God bless America. I've got $2,500, $2,600 to spend on a phone even if it's not going to be my primary driver. Actually there has on that. There actually have been enough marketing studies now that there have been folding phones available for so long. I would have imagined that given the price, most of the people buying these are not necessarily buying it as their primary phone. They're saying, well, I got the second line, the second phone for when I want a foldable, but I still got a normal phone. Turns out that most people are turned when they buy these folding phones even for $2,000. They're actually trading in their existing and they are using it as their daily drive.
- [84:08]
A
Yeah, that's what I did.
- [84:09]
D
I don't know if that would be the same.
- [84:11]
A
This was my, my only Android phone until recently.
- [84:14]
D
Yeah.
- [84:15]
A
And it's, you know, Samsung did it right. It's really thin, it's light, it feels good. It's, you know, I mean I think they did a good job with it. But Android, I know you're an Android user, Andy, so I won't, I won't smirch Android. But it just, it doesn't use the real estate any better. It's just like a bigger screen.
- [84:34]
D
It's amazing that, that Google decided two and a half, maybe three years ago that hey, how about if you actually, how about if you didn't have. Sorry. Even in the tablet era when the Android tablet makers were trying to compete with the iPad, even then Google was so far behind on the idea of oh well, we'll just have a phone app that just basically stretches in size to fill this iPad size screen. It's only the past two or three years that they seemed to have gotten really, really serious about understanding what you do on Android when it's not a phone size screen. Samsung had to build pretty much all of that infrastructure themselves, not only for their tablets but also for these foldables. And they've actually been collaborating with Google to develop these systems because Google for some reason decided that wasn't super important.
- [85:21]
A
Gurman also says the new MacBook Pro, the M5J, 714 and 716 should come out soon. They are slated for the 26.3 Mac OS software so cycle that means in the next month or two. He also says good news that OLED M6 will probably be out this year in the, in the fall. So good news for me because that's, that's the one I thought maybe I would get. Although now I'm not so sure. But we'll see. We'll see.
- [85:52]
D
There is a, actually there's a breaking news so to speak of Apple just a couple hours ago announced Xcode 26.3.
- [85:59]
A
We're going to get to that statue.
- [86:01]
D
We're going to. Sorry, I didn't see on the show notes. So go ahead.
- [86:03]
A
The next one down we will be talking about AI. I think that's enough on rumors. Andy's right. We're going to move on. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy and Ako. Alex Lindsey is being replaced soon, but until then, Shelley Brisbin is with us, which is wonderful. Alex's seat, as I mentioned, will be filled by Christina Warren end of the month. And for Jason Snell, who's on vacation or maybe he's at Apple's 2026 TV event today, which I didn't know about, I don't know. He said he's on vacation. We'll see. Anyway, we're glad to have Michael quotes around that probably. Well maybe it's on the way to vacation. He's still away for we heard you. Nine years of Bring back the Snack.
- [86:48]
D
Wrap and you've won.
- [86:50]
B
But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the Hot Panny Snack Wrap.
- [86:56]
A
Now you've renamed. Really one go to McDonald's and get it while you can.
- [87:01]
B
Kids, they grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps, and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small. And their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile because you can profit off of it for real. There are a bunch of parents on depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download depop to start selling.
- [87:32]
A
Time is valuable. That's why Lowe's blueprint takeoffs turn blueprints into quotes faster. Bring us your plans and we'll generate itemized material lists to make quoting easier so you can get back to Building Plus. At the Lowe's Pro desk, you get access to thousands of building materials not sold in store. And when your order is ready, we'll deliver everything to the job site. Improving is easy at Lowe's. All right, Andy. So agentic coding comes to xcode Apple clearly stinging a little bit because first thing that happens last week, Google I'm sorry Anthropic announced is Claude Cowork, which only runs on a Mac and is designed to be kind of a cross between Claude code, which is command line based and Claude the chatbot so that you can chat with it and have it do stuff. We talked a couple of weeks ago on Twitter with one of my favorite security guys, Alex Stamos, and he said it was very impressive the way Google Anthropic had wrapped wrapped cowork in a. It's a virtual machine, which is why it takes so long to launch. I mean they really paid attention to security for this thing. Also in response, OpenAI announced, oh well, we got something. Mac only. Our Codex coding agent is now an app on Mac only. And I think Apple must have said we gotta do something. So they have announced go ahead, Andy, it was. It's your start story.
- [89:06]
D
No, no, no. I just saw it like 10 minutes ago. You probably have. It's. I don't know anything about it.
- [89:12]
A
I will tell you 26.3 and they're.
- [89:15]
D
Integrating right all the coding AI into right into your workflow.
- [89:19]
A
So you can either use Claude Agent, which I'm not sure what that is if they mean Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex directly in Xcode. To me, honestly, I'm less interested in these IDE based tools like Codex or Google's Anti Gravity or Xcode with an Agent built in or VS Code with Copilot built in. I think the command line is the way to do this. Because honestly, once you start using this, you're not really writing that much code. You're letting the agent do the things.
- [89:54]
D
The thing that I always wonder about is I'm not a professional developer. I'm not part of like a hundred person team that's building something super important that a corporation is going to be run on off of. I'm always wondering whenever I see. Great, hey, we've added agent encodings features to our systems.
- [90:10]
A
Great.
- [90:10]
D
How are you helping these developers integrate it into the existing code base? How are you integrating this into testing, into validation, into certification, into compliance with all kinds of other things. As somebody who uses AI a lot for scripting, for coding, for even writing little apps where I'm the only person who's in charge of this project and no small, medium or large city is going to lose electricity because I didn't do this correctly, I wish I had more understanding about how significant this is for people who actually do real coding, as opposed to people like me who are just amateurs or have been working at a company that can't afford to basically have an entire coding team and has to basically create a purchasing system by scratch and only has about $500 in which to.
- [91:01]
A
Yeah, I mean this is how I code in with these agents is on a command line in the terminal. I mean, that just really seems to be the best way to do it. In fact, I recently asked it to do a podcast rewinding app and I'm very excited to have this because I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of times people return their podcasts after they subscribe and they're not rewound, which means our staff here at Twitter has to rewind that podcast before we put it back on the server. So I thought an automated podcast rewinding app.
- [91:39]
D
Well, I mean, I.
- [91:40]
A
To which Claude said, by the way, I'd be happy to help you build a podcast rewinding app. Before I create a plan, I need to understand more about what you're looking for.
- [91:48]
B
Be sure and make sure it has some audio so that you can hear the rewinding as well.
- [91:54]
A
The whole thing should play backwards. Oh, you know what? Maybe I will do it.
- [91:57]
C
That's Actually, that would be funny.
- [91:59]
B
Make it go backwards.
- [92:00]
A
Okay, I'm gonna do it very high speed.
- [92:01]
B
There you go.
- [92:02]
C
Yeah.
- [92:02]
D
And, and, and just, just like VHS rewinders. It should be shaped like a little car.
- [92:06]
A
Okay. And you, and you pop the podcast in.
- [92:10]
C
Yeah.
- [92:10]
A
Where do you put it? You put it in the trunk or you put it in the roof? Where do you put it?
- [92:13]
D
No, I think it opens like a funny car. You know, the whole top. The whole top.
- [92:16]
A
Whole top comes open, pop it in. Then I will have that by the time the show's over. Anyway, if you use Xcode, I guess it's nice to have agentic coding. I mean, I think you use Xcode to write code. Not this. This is the same thing Microsoft's doing, which is. And by the way, Firefox was getting a lot of heat for. It's just kind of painting your stuff with AI doesn't do the job. In fact, Firefox just announced, okay, fine, we're gonna have a switch that you could just turn off all AI and there'll be no AI at all. And I bet you a lot of people will use Firefox for that reason. So I haven't played with OpenAI's Codex app. I suppose I should. Have any of you tried it?
- [93:00]
C
I have. I have tasted it.
- [93:03]
A
And does it have a vanilla, Creamy vanilla center? Yeah, it's got.
- [93:07]
C
You know what, it's a little. It's a little bland for me in terms like, I don't know, I've just gotten so used to Claude code.
- [93:12]
A
Yeah. Command line is where it's at.
- [93:15]
C
Yeah. That it's kind of.
- [93:17]
A
Turns out I really want to. I really want to tweet this or something. The metaverse is text based. We didn't know this. We were worried about legs and, you know, facial expression. It's all text based. If you're really fancy and you can do this with a Codex or Claude code, I guess you dictate instead of typing. But other than that it's text based. So if you want to try it, if you're. If you're a codecs user. I'm kind of of the opinion and maybe I'm wrong on this again. There's two classes of people. There's people who want to type at the terminal and there's people who want to click with their mouse. And the mouse clicking people don't really want this. Just give me a menu. Maybe, I don't know, maybe there's a market for it.
- [94:07]
D
Maybe a generation is going to have to retire like voluntarily. There's so many technologies or so many systems and changes to society or a workforce that don't really dig in until a generation ages out of the system, leaving a, leaving a population that is more open to not necessarily doing things the way that they were trained to do, you know, back in the 1900s.
- [94:31]
A
Are you saying that it's old fashioned to use a command line, a terminal?
- [94:35]
D
No, no, no. Just, just, just that people have certain expectations.
- [94:38]
A
I am an old man.
- [94:38]
D
I understand that microwave ovens are stock, are standard issue for every single kitchen. There was a generation that said no, well, no, we don't. That's not how you heat some stuff. You can't, you can't. The oils have to relate to this.
- [94:50]
A
Yeah.
- [94:51]
D
Versus well, no, we're not going to cook everything with a microwave. But basically it's going to allow me to do them, do my potatoes beforehand and then when it's time to plate quickly nuke them up, you know, hand them over to chef mics before I plate them at the last minute.
- [95:04]
A
So yeah, you actually, you, you're, you, you're one of the people who's taught me the value of microwaving. I was that old guy who said I'm not gonna microwave. That's not cooking, that's electronics. All right, let's talk about some tips. I didn't know this. I probably should listen to some of our shows more often. Like Hands on. I have Apple with Mr. Micah soon. But when 26 came out they turned on the ability to auto size columns based on file names. I used to double click. In fact, I only found out because I was double clicking the thing and nothing happened in the column. Now there's a setting in the finder view that the column will always be as big as it needs to be.
- [95:53]
B
Finder has spreadsheet features.
- [95:58]
C
It rolled out from numbers and fell into Finder.
- [96:02]
A
Yeah, so it came out with Tahoe 26.1 Apple. I just thought maybe I'm not the only one. This is a til. You hate it. Maybe that's another old school thing. It started with NextStep. Steve Jobs added it to the next cube computing system. I liked it so much there and I was thrilled when back added it. When they went, you know, acquired next. It's just a natural way to look at files, isn't it? Why do you hate it?
- [96:31]
C
I hate it. I'm a list view person. I want to be able to. Because for me it's too much visual information at once and I want to be able to go okay, I'm one. I'm one. Direct. Like I'm nesting. We're getting inside this folder. I'm looking at all the things. Okay, oh wait, I got to go one more deep and I don't want to keep scrolling over to get to where I'm trying to go while also being distracted by all of the things that came before it because I can conceptualize where I am in the nested directory.
- [97:02]
A
Maybe that's my problem. I have no sense of direction.
- [97:05]
D
So you need the breadcrumbs. I totally agree with that.
- [97:08]
A
Yeah. By the way, I think I like.
- [97:09]
B
Column view because I keep my windows pretty small. If I let them get too big, then you have four or five columns and that's just unworkable. But usually my column view is a sidebar and a couple of columns and then I have another window over here because I'm dragging stuff around and moving it here and there. But you make your windows too wide, it gets out of control and I don't like it at all.
- [97:31]
A
Weirdly, I found this in the Rapid Weaver forums. I don't even.
- [97:36]
C
That is, I was. When I clicked on this link and I thought, who?
- [97:39]
A
Where?
- [97:40]
C
How?
- [97:41]
A
Well, this is one of the places. But it has the command line if you are not yet on Sequoia. I mean, if you're not yet on Tahoe, still in Sequoia, you can use a defaults command to enable auto sizing. So you have to do.
- [97:54]
B
You're just finding more reasons to use the command line.
- [97:56]
A
Command line, baby. Real computer users use passwords now has. This is a nice feature in iOS 26. Did you talk about this on iOS today?
- [98:08]
C
Not this morning. It's one of the new features.
- [98:11]
A
Many weeks ago, probably.
- [98:13]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [98:14]
A
Okay, well, I finally got. Again, this is the Tilt section that when. This has always been a hassle for me. When you create a new password, if you don't copy it, you don't add it. It just.
- [98:28]
C
If something goes wrong, sometimes there's some sort of pop up comes up and on the site and then you don't get it saved.
- [98:34]
A
And now Apple has added a new password box that you can go to where all the new passwords that you've generated but aren't saved, it's a new menu item. It's called the generated passwords menu item. Bitwarden has this. I imagine all good password managers have it, but Apple has now added it and that's. I don't know, maybe it's just me because I create a password.
- [98:58]
C
No, it's it's that sense.
- [98:59]
B
No, it happens a lot.
- [99:01]
C
Yeah it's an issue I have that happen with one password often where some it's again it's usually because of it needing to do those JavaScript injections on the page to be able to show you all the stuff and so then something on the page will match mess up if there's like a timer that pops up whatever and then. Oh great. What was that password? Well now I've got to use the forgot password dialogue and try again. So yeah this is I think a very good feature to have.
- [99:28]
A
I have not yet seen the Apple TV show Drops of God. Have you? As anybody. It's about wine.
- [99:34]
B
I haven't heard of that one even till today I saw that headline.
- [99:37]
A
Yeah here's a new way of promoting Apple TV shows. They've made a drops of guide God wine guide guide in Apple maps.
- [99:45]
C
Oh yes I did see this part of it. Yeah. So look Apple put together or really talked about these guides right. That, that would be part of the maps experience and I think I've maybe used this feature twice in.
- [100:04]
A
Flyovers for a while. They, they seem to have been taking those out.
- [100:09]
B
War.
- [100:10]
A
There's a chief of war map guide to Hawaii. Yeah, that's the Jason Momoa actually it's not a bad show. I watched one, just one episode but it's got like 10 highlights of Hawaii. I don't know. It's a kind of interesting use of the.
- [100:27]
C
Yeah, I like stuff.
- [100:29]
A
It's promotional only.
- [100:30]
C
Exactly. It, it still just let me turn.
- [100:32]
B
Them on or off. Yes, I, I, I hate them. Not just the ads but I don't to want like that they're in the way and they do seem to be less in the way than they used to be maybe before iOS 26 but.
- [100:46]
A
I don't like them more of the promotional stuff. By the way one of the things Apple does absolutely right and it's brilliant is their regular Apple platform security updates. The January 2026 PDF is out now and Apple is more forthcoming than anybody on how they do their security. It's always impressive. It, you know this is more than 100 pages actually more than 200 pages. 262 pages of in depth subscription descriptions of how Apple does their security and they really do a good job with blastor and, and lockdown mode and, and all of this stuff. They even talk about how they do random number generation so that you know it's, it's, it's done properly. You know they use entropy sources from the secure Enclave Hardware and timing based jitter collected during boot and stuff. Steve Jobs will I'm sure Steve Jobs what is going wrong with my brain? Am I. Did I have a stroke? Steve Gibson will be talking about this I'm sure at some point. You know what it is I am I've been clot pilled.
- [102:02]
C
I was going to say yeah not in this.
- [102:03]
A
Not in this world that anymore I'll be I and the other AI taken off in just a little bit anyway the Apple platform security document is out help.apple.com really really really good. Speaking of security they've done something with their C series modems that is really good. I did not know another til maybe you all knew this.
- [102:30]
C
It was a til for me too.
- [102:31]
A
I did not know but your cell phone provider doesn't just know where you are based on triangulating the cell towers. There is a built in feature of all cell phones and all cell phone carriers. They can request your exact GPS coordinates and in this day and age that may not be good news because as you know cell phone carriers are very very cooperative with law enforcement, ICE agents and so forth.
- [102:59]
D
Remember the good old days when we just worried that they're going to be collecting that data they were that would happen is that we be marketed against.
- [103:04]
A
Yeah I know and now see then.
- [103:06]
D
I in mind this is a safety issue.
- [103:08]
A
It's a safety issue. So one of the things that Apple's new C series modems does and you could see this setting I actually turn it on in your cellular data options is limit tracking. It's not just cell towers. Now I'm not completely clear that this turns off off the GPS feature because unfortunately the carrier has to support it. So so far in the US the only carrier that supports it is Boost Mobile.
- [103:41]
B
So isn't Boost and MVNO aren't they. Yeah T Mobile. Yeah that seems odd that that's the.
- [103:48]
A
One that supports well it tells you a little something about these mobile carriers and their real priorities doesn't President?
- [103:56]
B
It's just confusing to me technologically because I mean I understand that I guess I don't know enough about the innards of the cellular network but if they're an MVNO for another carrier.
- [104:07]
A
Right. Yeah and Apple Insider in its report says at the very end and we probably expect the carriers to sue Apple over this so don't depend on they're.
- [104:22]
D
Going to make the argument that the reason why we could we need to collect GPS information is to basically understand map out where our signal where our customers are not getting good signals so that we can adjust our powers accordingly. Which is fair and valid. But again, it would have been a better argument. It was a better argument five or six years ago than it is today.
- [104:39]
A
Yeah. Oh, by the way, Shelly, Scooter X in our club chat says T Mobile sold boost mobile to EchoStar, the Dish Co. That was part of the deal, so that T Mobile could merge with Sprint.
- [104:52]
C
Oh, that's right.
- [104:53]
A
The whole. The whole lie was, oh, don't worry, because there's going to be a whole new cell carrier from Dish, which is Boost Mobile. So there you go. The more you know, the more you know. Til. This is the TIL episode. So Apple TV press day. I didn't know about that either. Learned about that today.
- [105:16]
C
I learned.
- [105:17]
A
Just today I learned.
- [105:18]
B
Looking for your invite, Leo.
- [105:20]
A
Yeah. Where? Deck. Where'd that go? Apple TV press day day. They unveiled some new stuff in Santa Monica today. It's a major invite only media event. Oh, I get it. I'm not media. That's why.
- [105:34]
C
You mean you're not Anya Taylor Joy.
- [105:36]
A
Yeah, Anya Taylor Joy is there. I would kill to meet her. Jon Hamm, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Garner, Keanu Reeves, James Marsden and more. They unveiled some new TV shows. There's a new teaser for imperfect women. Don't know what that is. Is Lucky is coming to Apple TV July 15th. That's a limited series with Anya Taylor Joy, based on the novel Lucky. Maximum pleasure guaranteed. Which sounds like a Cinemax title, but no, it's a comedic thriller. Starting Tatiana maslany. Coming up May 20th. Outcome, a dark comedy film with Keanu Reeves we already knew about. Legacy of Monsters. There's a new trailer that's coming end of the month. Cape Fear. Remember Cape Fear? What a scary movie. With Robert Mitchum. And then there was a remake not so long ago that wasn't so scary. They're going to make it a third time. Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg producing. It'll be a psychologic, a psychological thriller. June 5th.
- [106:44]
C
One of my favorite genres.
- [106:46]
A
Have you seen the Robert Mitchum version of Cape Fear?
- [106:48]
D
It is, Yeah.
- [106:50]
C
I have to add it to my list.
- [106:53]
A
Your friends and Neighbor Season 2 trailer and the new ad. Can I show this or not? John Ashley. It's an ad for Apple. Are they going to take me down? It's called the Humans of Apple tv. And what it is, is. And it's great. It's behind the scene pictures. Pictures behind the scenes pictures from Apple TV shows. And I love it. It's really fun and I recommend it. But I can't show it because I don't know why.
- [107:26]
B
Apple tv, it's supposed to tell us that AI is not controlling Apple tv, I think is the point.
- [107:32]
A
Oh, it's humans. Oh, you're right. Remember that ad where we crushed all the stuff you used to create stuff? Yeah, forget that.
- [107:39]
C
Forget about Leo. I'm gonna show it.
- [107:41]
D
We focus.
- [107:42]
A
It's a slideshow. I'm not playing the music, no commentary, so. And I am. I know it's fair use, but that doesn't mean Apple won't pull us down. Anyway.
- [107:51]
C
A lot of humans. There's humans. And also there's humans. Oh, there's another human.
- [107:56]
A
There's a human. I like that picture of the severance stars with their hair all must because it was it like an explosion. I can't remember what happened. There was a reason that their hair is all must. No spoilers. But the reason there's a hair almost.
- [108:10]
D
And this is a slideshow which makes me think that either a, they got this idea way too late to like arrange or all the stars are like, we can. I will, I will film this special 10 second clip for you. How much will that.
- [108:22]
A
They're not even clips, they're just stills. It's obviously there's behind the scenes. They wanted money if they wanted more. I get it.
- [108:28]
B
I saw those pictures and I thought, well, is it a promo for the photos app or something? I mean, why are we showing slides slideshows?
- [108:34]
A
Because they didn't think ahead of time to do behind the scenes video, I guess. I don't know. I mean there's actually a lot of behind the scenes video severance, especially of that opening of the last season where he's running and running and running down the corridors and stuff. The way they filmed that was amazing.
- [108:50]
C
It was.
- [108:52]
A
F1TV is now exclusively on Apple TV. F1 starts in March. March, believe it or not. They don't have a lot of time between races and they have already started putting some programming on Apple TV which I looked for and could not find. But I'm told maybe they were waiting for this big event that I wasn't invited to. So there is a new section called get ready for Formula One on Apple TV rev up for 26 with highlights, previews and more. So a lot of little short videos like Lando Norris, Ride with the Champ and actually the one I'll probably be watching, which is 2026 F1 rule changes. That's gripping. That'll be a thrilling ride.
- [109:40]
B
Yeah.
- [109:41]
A
Yeah. So there's a. There's a videos and so forth schedule, first Grand Prix coming up just a couple of months F1TV. And if you. The nice thing for me is I paid a lot of of Money for my F1TV subscription last year and I guess it's all just rolled into my Apple TV subscription. So that's.
- [110:02]
B
Can you trade it for a creator studio subscription?
- [110:05]
A
I just want an invite to next Apple tv.
- [110:08]
B
That's all.
- [110:09]
A
That's all I ask. And now, ladies and gentlemen, before we get ready for our picks of the week, it's our Vision Pro segment. The number one.
- [110:19]
B
What do you know?
- [110:20]
A
It's time to talk the Vision Vision Pro number one Vision Pro podcast in the world. Nothing to say except that this is the second anniversary of the release of Vision Pro. It came out on Groundhog's Day 2024, which had been. So yesterday was the second anniversary.
- [110:44]
C
Congratulations vision Pro, on still being here.
- [110:49]
D
For only being, for all intents and purposes, canceled as opposed to actually canceled.
- [110:54]
A
Is it canceled? Is it.
- [110:56]
D
No, no.
- [110:56]
A
I feel like Apple is semi committed to it.
- [111:00]
D
Oh. I mean, no, they're committed to the platform. I don't. It doesn't feel as though they're putting a lot of effort into making people think about buying one of these things and expanding the reach. They. I think they. They feel as though everybody who was destined to buy one of these has already bought one of these. And that we don't. We. There was no mention of it in the. In the earnings call. He didn't at all. Tim did not boast of.
- [111:24]
B
They didn't break out Vision Pro sales. The devil you say.
- [111:29]
A
Okay.
- [111:30]
D
Although we did. There's. There's also a dog show documentary for. On Vision Pro.
- [111:36]
A
And I should mention this because Shelly here.
- [111:38]
C
Sorry, sorry. I just want to make sure I understood what I thought I heard you say, Andy, which is that there is a dog show documentary for the Vision Pro.
- [111:47]
A
Oh, you don't know about that.
- [111:49]
D
Called Top Dogs 2 episodes in immersive Video.
- [111:52]
C
The reason I'm asking is because I want to make sure it's not actually a mockument called Best in Show. Oh.
- [112:00]
B
Don'T mock the dogs.
- [112:01]
A
I do have to mention that I think a lot of people were watching Best of Best in Show Cookie and other wonderful efforts by our late lamented friend. What's your favorite?
- [112:16]
C
It's hard to say, honestly, like my favorite character that she's played or.
- [112:21]
D
She's so good.
- [112:22]
C
I mean, Jennifer Rose really is really good.
- [112:25]
A
Yeah, it's great.
- [112:26]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [112:26]
A
Yeah.
- [112:27]
D
I have to go all the way back to Lola Heatherton on sctv.
- [112:30]
A
Sctv.
- [112:31]
B
I was just going to choose sctv. Generally. I don't. I don't know that I would pick a character. I would just say all the sctv. And the thing about Schitt's Creek, though, is if you for some reason have missed it or only watched part of it, there are many, many wonderful compilations on YouTube of more rose that are worth your time.
- [112:49]
A
I'm just quickly seeing if I can somehow get. Get Schitt's Creek into the Vision Pro.
- [112:57]
B
Immersive Schitt's Creek.
- [112:59]
A
Yeah.
- [113:00]
D
You kind of want to hold that family at arm's distance. I don't think you want to be immersed in that family.
- [113:05]
B
That's the way I feel.
- [113:06]
C
I did love her. I did love Catherine o' Hara's A Mighty Wind character as well.
- [113:12]
A
All of those mockumentaries.
- [113:14]
C
Yeah.
- [113:14]
B
I will also say that Catherine o' Hara did an interview with Julia Louis Dreyfus on her Wiser Than Me podcast, and it is excellent.
- [113:22]
C
So that's why I love both of them so much.
- [113:25]
B
If you want to hear Catherine O', Hara, just talk for 50 minutes about wonderful things. Listen.
- [113:30]
C
Hang on. What is her show called?
- [113:31]
B
It's called Wiser Than Me, Wiser than. And Julia Lou Dreyfus interviews older women. And Catherine was on last season. And in fact, right after she passed, they re.
- [113:43]
C
Oh, yeah, see, they rename, released it. Definitely.
- [113:45]
A
She wasn't that old. She was 2 years old.
- [113:47]
B
71.
- [113:48]
A
I know.
- [113:48]
B
She's not old.
- [113:49]
C
I know. I was shocked. I thought, why is this happening?
- [113:52]
A
So brilliant, so wonderful. Oh, and for your benefit, I know you're a dog lover. This is the Vision Pro Top dogs in Apple Immersive. It's so realistic. You can feel.
- [114:04]
C
You can feel the dogs. If you put various fur items in front of. Of you, you can feel that.
- [114:12]
B
All right.
- [114:13]
A
Somebody's saying Katherine o' Hara was a great actress, but she was a terrible mom. She would leave her kids home alone and get on an airplane.
- [114:21]
B
Shocking. Shocking.
- [114:24]
D
In her defense, that was a. That was a pretty big house. That's a lot of easy.
- [114:28]
A
Easy to. She had a lot of kids. So easy.
- [114:31]
B
Also, Macaulay Culkin seems fine with it. He tweeted a very nice remembrance after she passed. So he's cool.
- [114:36]
A
He's one of the things. When she passed a couple of days ago, going through all of the tributes from so many. She was beloved. Sometimes somebody dies when Chevy Chase dies. Don't expect quite so many loving tributes, but boy, she was Beloved. She was beloved. And that's our vision Prohibition pro. I had to get something else in there. I couldn't just leave it with two year anniversary thing. I do want to mention this before we move to the picks of the week because it's Shelley put the story in and she's the expert on this. The Winter Olympics are coming up and for blind or low vision users there is some good news. It's going to be a very accessible Olympics. Tell us about that.
- [115:28]
B
Well, and I know that this isn't precisely an Apple story, but maybe I thought of it as one because I've watched a lot of Peacock on my Apple TV and Peacock, one of the NBC properties that's going to be streaming the Winter Olympics. NBC has had audio description and closed captions on the Olympics events for a long time, but they're doing pretty much all of them. And I assume that the thing that makes it possible to have audio description, particularly on live sporting events, is that they're not live, is that you have the chance after the event has happened in Europe to do the audio description before it plays in the United States.
- [116:04]
A
So I've never. You can turn this on. I should turn it on. I've never turned on audio description in movies or anything.
- [116:09]
B
It's an SAP channel and the light sound like. Well, it's, it's actually sort of an art form because you, if you're doing it in a movie, you want to do it when there's dialogue not happening. The funny thing is if you're, if you're watching, sometimes the description will have to come a slight bit before the action has happened, just so it can catch up. But there are companies and individuals who, you know, will provide audio description. All of Netflix Originals are described. Peacock has a lot of audio description, which is why I was excited to see that they're adding this to Winter Olympic coverage. But the live sports aspect is really interesting. And I shouldn't say live because as I say, they are replays. But the idea that you go from a television show or a movie that's scripted and produced long before they do the description to an event that happened today and somebody can create audio description, that's exciting. So I can watch ski jumping, which is. Or figure skating or whatever it is, and it's going to be described to me.
- [117:05]
A
Do they do it like Hispanic soccer broadcasters go. Or they do it more like golf and now she's jumping off the diving.
- [117:15]
B
See, that's a really good question with sports, because movies. A really good audio description for movies or television kind of matches the tone. So if you were watching Ted Lasso, for example, you would have somebody who was pretty easygoing, going, and. And sort of had a, you know, sort of a charm about them. Whereas if it was a tense drama, you're gonna have somebody a little more intense. And. And the. And the, you know, the guy points the gun and he shoots or whatever it is. But usually the description, if it's well done, it functions as narration as opposed to sort of overdone, you know, over the over. They're not trying to resell it. It's not like a trailer. It's not like in a world. It's more like, okay, and Jon Hamm and, you know, the actor. What's it. Bob enters. He's wearing a gray wool coat. Why are you telling me he's wearing a gray wool coat? Because that will probably become relevant later. He wouldn't tell me about. He wouldn't tell me what he was wearing. Right.
- [118:09]
D
You wouldn't.
- [118:10]
B
That's. That's what's funny about Audio description. So why are you telling me that he's wearing a gray wool coat? That's going to become relevant? Because if you. If you didn't tell me, it probably wouldn't become.
- [118:20]
C
Okay. I kind of want to watch something with this. I do.
- [118:22]
A
I do.
- [118:23]
B
You get. You get description about facial expressions, which is really helpful to me because even if I can see the action, a lot of times I miss the subtleties of facial expressions. So it's very helpful to sort of like director's commentary.
- [118:35]
A
I love. I won't listen to director's commentary on the first viewing, but if a movie was good enough to watch twice, I won't.
- [118:42]
B
And I will say that well done. Audio description, unlike director's commentary, doesn't cover over the actual director's commentary.
- [118:48]
A
That is one of the annoying things.
- [118:50]
B
Right. So here's why I have trouble here.
- [118:52]
A
We use chewing gum wrappers to simulate lights in the background. Meanwhile. Yeah, that's why you don't want. What is he saying?
- [118:58]
B
What is he saying?
- [118:58]
A
Yeah, you don't do it the first time through. The Rose Byrne movie that she's nominated for an Oscar for. If I had Legs, I would kick you is so brutal. It's so difficult that Lisa and I abandoned it halfway through.
- [119:17]
C
Oh, wow.
- [119:17]
A
Really? I went back and finished it because it was a tour de force. She's in close, close up. You don't see really much else except her face and her reactions. It's two hours of how stressful it is to be a mom. Her husband's a captain on a ship and he's distant, and she's got a child who's got a disability and just everything's going wrong and it's all of this stress for two hours. But I wanted to finish it because a. She's gonna win the Oscar. It's a complete tour de force. An act. Acting. But. But I wanted to give it, you know, didn't want to give it short shrifts. I saw. One reviewer said I watched it, but I'm. I'm never watching it again. But I did watch it again with the director's commentary because it was fascinating to hear. I was trying to figure out why did they make this movie? You know, they. They must have known how challenging this was going to be for audiences. You saw it, obviously, Andy.
- [120:12]
D
No, you know what, what happened was that I was interested in it, both because of it, its reputation, and also, hey, Conan o' Brien in a dramatic role. That should be interesting. And then what's it about? And I'm like. And I'm like, you have to make yourself watch. I need to be in a frame of mind to see something very, very intense. It's on the list for that. For that when that time comes. But I'm not. That's not. That's not what the movie is.
- [120:38]
A
So I will tell you this, and it might help. Conan is a genius in it. Good friend and the author and director. It's only your second movie and the last one was like 10 years ago. The author and director said, I grew up being a fan of Conan's and, and I wrote him a letter when I was in middle school and he wrote me a letter back. So I thought maybe I'll just cast him in this movie. It is. It is not a comedic role.
- [121:02]
D
Exactly.
- [121:02]
A
Yeah, he. He. She said he. He was terrified about doing it because it's. It's not funny and he's brilliant.
- [121:09]
D
Yeah, there are a lot of movies like that where it's like, like Magnolia and the Hours. Both those movies are. That was. Those are great movies. I'm so glad I saw them. I never going to watch those movies.
- [121:20]
A
Again because I've watched Magnolia a bunch of times because I, I love Paul Thomas Anderson, of course. Amazing.
- [121:26]
D
Yeah.
- [121:27]
A
But anyway, I think you. I think anybody, as long as you know what you're getting into. And if you want to see an incredible acting and you want to see Conan and Brad Brian in a role that is not, it's not typecast. She said she had a conversation with him. Oh, no, she was listening. No, no, no. This was. She was listening to his podcast and he got into a deep conversation with somebody and she thought, you know, he's. He could be deep and serious. I should cast him as this psychiatrist in this role. And I was like, what? But it was brilliant. Anyway, how did we get on to this?
- [122:01]
C
I don't recall, actually.
- [122:02]
A
I apologize.
- [122:03]
B
I think you took us there, Leo. I don't know how exactly I got you there.
- [122:07]
A
And I'm sorry again. I'm not really of this world anymore. Rat hole. Thank you. Let's start with Shelley and our picks.
- [122:18]
D
Yes.
- [122:19]
A
Again.
- [122:20]
B
Oh, yeah. I appreciate the jiggle to start the picks off with.
- [122:24]
A
They're all rat holes.
- [122:26]
B
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast. Smart. Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [122:56]
A
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to.
- [122:59]
C
Get that special someone in your life, life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless.
- [123:06]
A
So here's the idea.
- [123:07]
C
You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.
- [123:11]
B
What do you have to lose?
- [123:12]
A
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [123:16]
B
50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or 180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms right. So my pick of the week is an app called Transit. It is not a new new app, but it has been updated a lot since I last used it. I was in California for a few days a couple weeks ago and so I had the chance to take the BART and the AC Transit and all of the various transit outfits. And one of the things when you're taking buses, especially if you're an unfamiliar area that you really want, is how long is it going to be before it arrives? Is it late? There's. Is it, you know, is it going to take me where I want to go? Obviously, but Transit has just done such a good job with the interface that it's very, very glanceable now. It's much more Glanceable than it used to be. You get real time information about where transit vehicles are. You can obviously plot routes, which you can do in Google Maps or Apple Maps. But this app is specifically geared toward using public transportation and making connections because that's often a big deal. It's like, well, I, I've got to this bus and I'm going to go from here to here, but how do I get to the next one and how many minutes do I have to get there? They also crowdsource a lot of the data, which can be both either annoying or really useful, depending on your point of view. So they will say just using the app, if you allow it, crowdsources your experience. So you hit the go button and you are being tracked on a transit trip for your own purposes. The point is for it to tell you when to get off, when your stop is coming up. But that data and the data about how on time the bus you're actually riding is passed along to the aggregate for the benefit of other users. Also, it includes some polls. So while you're riding the bus, the poll, only while you're riding will the polls pop up and they'll say things like rate the safety of this stop, good, bad, average, whatever. And then you agree to answer a poll question and then you get one more poll question and you answer that. And the third poll question is, have you had enough or would you like some more poll questions? So it does a pretty good job of being respectful of your time. And as I say, the interface is just really attractive. And I think it, it strikes the right balance between crowdsourced social app and Leave me alone. I'm just trying to get home on the bus.
- [125:37]
A
Do you. So you live in Austin? Are you able to. Pretty much. I mean, how's the mass transit there? Can you get around?
- [125:42]
B
It's okay. And I use it. I think the thing in Austin is that I don't really need an app because I kind of know how often the buses I typically take are going to come. And I also am at home a lot. I don't go out as much as I should, but out there, there, I mean, I was having lived in California for, in the Bay Area for almost five years, I knew the area, but I hadn't been in Oakland, which is where I was for, for a film festival. And so we were getting from where we were staying to the film festival and to other places around the Bay Area. And so even though I knew the area, I didn't know the sort of ins and outs and the rhythms of the transit and how to switch between BART and AC transit, for example. So it was really good for the experience of somebody. Somebody who's, oh, I'm taking public transit now, but I'm not really sure how to do that where I am.
- [126:28]
A
Awesome. Thank you, Shelley. So great to have you. I appreciate you being here.
- [126:32]
B
I appreciate your having me, and I.
- [126:34]
A
Will have you with Christina. That's awesome. I'm making a mental note of that.
- [126:38]
D
Hooray.
- [126:39]
A
If you've ever gone to the Apple Store and said, why don't they sell that Mag Safe demo Charger, you should know about the Apple Unsold website.
- [126:47]
C
This is so cool.
- [126:49]
A
Which will be taken down any minute now, actually. They say due to a surge in recent orders, we aren't allowing people to order anything right now because we got to catch up. But what, did they buy out some Apple Store that was closing or something? But the MagSafe demo charger is $119, but it is available. The Vision Pro tray, the GoldenEye cable, the Apple Watch. You know, I bet you Rene Richie has already purchased the Apple Watch band tray because he has a lot of those anyway. What a strange idea. The. It's Apple unsold. The Apple products you can't buy anywhere else.
- [127:33]
D
I think somebody bought a storage locker and found cases of things and said, you know what? I'm going to make hay from this while we've got them. The only other. The only other answer is that these are like knockoffs. But it is. It is an ex.
- [127:48]
A
If you say they're genuine and they're expected and it's an exhaustive list.
- [127:53]
D
It's like there's nothing that you could find in an Apple Store display that it seems that they don't. They don't have the giant iPhone from like 2008, 2009, but everything else they seem to have. And it's like, I'm chagrin to find out that, no, those aren't those. Those display items. They aren't free. You're not allowed to simply take them. Okay, maybe I made a few mistakes. I'm glad to have an opportunity to actually pay for them.
- [128:16]
A
If I'm giving him one appleunsold.com and as long as I've got you, let me give you one more Bugs Apple loves. Why else would they keep them around for so long? Total time wasted by humanity. Because Apple won't fix these 32.4 million users years per year. So if you ever hit one of these bugs, and there are a few of them, you Will recognize this page. Mail search doesn't work. The search bar is purely decorative. I don't know if that's a bug or feature, but anyway, this is great. They have all of the long term bugs and the consequences. Autocorrect won't take no for an answer. You fixed it. It unfixed it. You fixed it again. It unfixed itself again. And they say the math of how many hours lost. This is such a snarky site.
- [129:12]
C
I love this. It's well written.
- [129:14]
A
It's so great. Apple Pay card icon changes address the credit card icon doesn't change the credit card.
- [129:22]
B
I should send them some accessibility bugs if they don't have them.
- [129:25]
A
Oh, I bet sometimes those are ignored. I bet. According to our completely made up estimates, Apple could fix this in 8 engineering hours. Instead, humanity wastes 33.87 hours every second clicking the Apple card hoping they could change cards. Nope. Changes the address.
- [129:42]
D
So good. Yeah, some of us would have said, hey, I'm sick and tired of these long standing bugs. I'm going to write like a long blog post or hey, I'm going to do like a 10 minute long YouTube video. But someone figured out that yeah, the best way to do it is to create a website and communicate it this way. And I'm sure, I'm sure this being shared and researched inside Cupertino.
- [130:02]
A
It is bugs Apple loves.
- [130:04]
C
Strongly worded letter yes.com highly, highly recommended.
- [130:10]
A
Annie Inako Pick of the Week well.
- [130:13]
D
We'Ve been talking about Catherine o' Hara which led to me saying, hey, wow, I haven't seen a mighty wind in a long time. Where can I find that? Where is it on streaming? And this is where I found this really good site called RealGood R E E L G O O D. It's not new, but it's new to me where you simply type in, well, what do you want to watch on streaming? And it will show you exactly where it is streaming. Right now it's only streaming for free on Pluto tv. But it also of course will have affiliate links to here's where you can rent it on every other platform. It's such a game changer for viewing because it also has cool stuff like as someone who subscribes, I subscribe to three streaming platforms. I might cancel a couple of them because I'm not using them enough. But this platform will help because it will tell you what's coming to streaming this month and also subscribe to HBO Max. Here's what's leaving the service this month. So you haven't seen. So if you haven't seen the American President yet, you probably want to see it before. Before the 30th because.
- [131:07]
B
Or before you cancel your HBO Max subscription. Temporarily watch the President.
- [131:12]
A
Yeah.
- [131:13]
D
And you can do searches based on. It has static pages or, excuse me, constantly updated pages. But you can also, you can also.
- [131:18]
A
Make a list, which I think is great. So you could say. And you enter in the services that you subscribe to so it can tell you. Schitt's Creek is available on Prime Video free with a 30 day free trial just in case you haven't seen it. This is good, Andy. I'm gonna sign up. It's free, right? There's no.
- [131:38]
D
It's free. I think they make the money off.
- [131:39]
A
Of the affiliate links from those you can see. Unlock all regions with NordVPN. So that's a lag effect, but it's a good. You know what? That's the kind of ad I like.
- [131:46]
D
It's, it's, it's bookmarks. It's bookmarks bar in the web browser grade. Useful to me.
- [131:52]
A
Yeah, that's how good it is. Really nice. They have reviews, they have comments. Comments.
- [131:58]
D
Yes, especially. Especially because all the, all the, all the content, especially like the catalog movies that keep moving in and out between different, different services. It's like they are not, it's really not hard. HBO is not going to promote, hey, wow, we've got around The World in 80 Days, the David Niven and Content Floss version. But because it's not like the sort of thing you want to promote over this wonderful Mel Brooks documentary that everybody's heard about. But it's like, hey, wow, HBO got. I haven't seen that in like 10 years. Content floss. Great. Let's watch that sometime. Let's add that to the watch list.
- [132:28]
B
Well, if you run an old movie podcast, you use sites like this all the time because you've said, all right, we're going to talk about this movie. And then you realize, oh crap, it's not streaming anywhere. Or here's where it is streaming so we can tell people, this is great.
- [132:43]
A
What was it? Real good R E e l good realgood.com.com. and finally, Mr. Micah Sargent.
- [132:52]
C
Yes. So you did say pick of the week, therefore, doing a pick. Look, there's lots to be stressed out about. And for me, when I'm stressed, like I can remember my great grandpa getting in trouble for my great grandma because he would be sort of like running his fingernail against another part of his fingernail. And so I tend to sort of pick at my nails and I need to not do that. And so for eight bucks, you can get a delightful fidget called the picky pad. And essentially what this is is a gel that has tiny little beads in it. And all you do is you just run your fingernail across it and the beads come out. And then you collect them in your little picky pad case, which is this. And then the great thing is afterward, you can microwave it.
- [133:49]
A
And I was going to say there's gotta be. Because I know you're not a fan of germs. There's gotta be a way to steer it. Sterilizing. Yeah.
- [133:56]
C
And. Yeah. And afterwards you can microwave it and start over fresh with a new picky.
- [133:59]
A
Pad I might get. That looks cool.
- [134:02]
C
It's. Honestly, it's.
- [134:03]
B
It's.
- [134:03]
C
It is. It does. What I needed it to do, which is to get me to stop picking at my fingernails so I could just pick out all these little beads and pop them down. And it's just a nice. It's a quiet fidget, too, which whenever I'm on camera is very helpful.
- [134:15]
A
Oh, yeah. I used to have a fidget spinner. Somebody sent me a fidget spinner. And after a while people start saying, what's that sound on your shows? There's this really weird. I went, oh, crap. I've been spinning the fidget spinner. I wanted to show you this. My daughter gave me a thinking putty. It says, it's crazy. Aaron's thinking putty. And it's very similar. And you just. But I can't get it open. You play with it. And she said, yeah, it's only slightly used, apparently.
- [134:45]
C
Slightly.
- [134:47]
A
She ran out of time to get Christmas presents. So that was my Christmas present this year was only a slightly used thinking putty. The picky pad looks really, really.
- [134:58]
C
It's nice. I like it a lot.
- [135:00]
A
Yeah. $7.99 on Amazon. I could have it by tomorrow.
- [135:04]
C
It says, comes with a little case to keep it. Yeah. Free of hairs and all that stuff. And then it has a little. This bag has to collect your beads so that whenever you start over fresh, you can pop them all back in.
- [135:16]
A
I don't get it. The beads come out of the.
- [135:18]
C
Yeah. So it's. It's like you're. You're pulling beads out of.
- [135:22]
A
With your finger. I get it.
- [135:23]
C
Yeah. The beads are inside and you're just sort of running your finger across and it's just a satisfying feeling.
- [135:28]
D
Oh. And when you microwave it, it melts and reabsorbs all the.
- [135:31]
C
Yeah. Reabsorbs the beads.
- [135:32]
A
So you can start just for sterilizing it.
- [135:34]
C
No, no, no, no, no, I didn't.
- [135:36]
A
And again. Til it's called Trichtotillomania.
- [135:41]
C
Yeah. So this. Yeah, this was actually originally invented for people who pick at their hair.
- [135:46]
B
Hairs.
- [135:48]
C
That's not something that I do. Thank goodness for me. Like I'm happy that that's not the case. But just as a. As again like sort of a fingernail picker. I. This has been very helpful to do this instead.
- [135:59]
A
Yeah. Wow. Well, now I'm. Now I'm getting into my. My thinking.
- [136:06]
C
Now you're getting into your thinking. Putty.
- [136:08]
A
It's quiet too.
- [136:09]
D
Yes.
- [136:10]
A
Thank you. Mr. Micah Sargent doing double duty today. Good to be here today. Earlier. We really appreciate you sticking around for Mac Break Weekly. And are you gonna do Paint by numbers again next year?
- [136:23]
C
Yeah, we'll be doing paint by numbers again and I think in the future I'm looking forward to getting one that's widely available so that we can all paint by numbers in there.
- [136:34]
A
All do the same numbers. That's Micah's crafting corner. The next one is February 8th, 18th, third Wednesday of every month. Feels like we just did it, but.
- [136:44]
C
I know time is flying.
- [136:45]
A
I love it. It's such a. Such a relaxing, peaceful show. And I like the. The illustration of the cruel work or whatever, the needle point.
- [136:54]
C
As you can imagine Anthony Nielsen and.
- [136:57]
A
AI Because Anthony did not and he did not needlepoint that. I know our AR user group actually is coming up on Friday. It's going to be a very interesting one. We're going to probably do set up open claw and see how many credit card numbers we can lose. This is all part of the fabulous club Twit. Your membership helps us keep these shows on the air. You might have noticed there were no ads today, at least as we produced Mac Break Weekly. There might be some if. Well, knock on wood. There'll be some additional ads later. There will be some on YouTube, but you don't ever have to see any of those ads if you join the club Club. So ad free versions of all the shows, access to the club, Twit, Discord, all the great conversation that goes on in there and it really is a wonderful hang. And the special shows and events like the user group, Micah's crafting Corner, Stacy's Book Club, all the things that we do in the club. Photo time coming up February 20th. Our assignment is flowing, things like that. But the main reason to do it is because it makes a Huge difference. Difference to us in our bottom line. It's about 25% of our operating expenses. You know, without our club members, I. We wouldn't be doing all these shows. I can tell you right now we couldn't, we couldn't afford to. So if you're not a member, please join us. We'd love to have you. Twit. TV Club. Twit. Thank you. Shelly Brisbin, Texas Standard Radio. Can I hear it if I don't live in the Lone Star, our state.
- [138:24]
B
I'm so glad you asked. You can find Texas Standard anywhere you get your podcasts. We broadcast on 30 public radio stations across Texas at 10am and sometimes there's a repeat. But for those of you who can't remember that or who aren't in Texas, just go to your podcast client and look for Texas Standard. And there we are.
- [138:43]
A
There you go. The national daily News show of Texas. I like it. So nice to see you. Sean Shelley. Thank you. I appreciate it. Andy Inocco. You'll find him at a public library near you.
- [138:58]
D
Yes, it's nice to be in a place where the heat is set so high because no one who's using this building is actually paying for it. In my house, I've got it at a rational level, but it's nice to basically say, oh, you know what, I could actually be. I could be wearing a T shirt right now.
- [139:14]
A
It was. How nice. Nice. So good to see you. Thank you, Andrew. And of course, Micah Sargent. Bless you.
- [139:22]
C
Thank you.
- [139:22]
A
Happy to be here. It's great to see you. Happy New Year. We'll see you again real soon. And all of you will see you again real soon. We do Mac break weekly on Tuesdays, 11am in the Pacific Time Zone. That'd be 1300. No, 14.
- [139:37]
D
No.
- [139:39]
A
1400. You math is hard.
- [139:43]
D
Daylight savings begins in a month. Claude, help me.
- [139:46]
C
I was going to say don't you press and assist.
- [139:49]
B
Get on the command line and ask Claw to help you. Open Claw.
- [139:52]
A
No, the worst thing you could do is ask AI what time it is. It's very confused. It doesn't know. It doesn't. There's no time in AI land.
- [139:58]
B
It's like I don't know where I am. I don't know where you are.
- [140:01]
A
I don't know where you are. I don't know what you are. 1400 East coast time. And that would be 1900 UTC. Only reason I mention when we do it is because you can't watch us record this show live. We stream it in in the club in the club Twit, discord, but also YouTube, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch and Kik. Watch us live. We'd love to have you in our chat rooms and watching live after the fact. You can of course download the show. We have audio and video versions available at our website, TWIT TV MBW. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to MacBreak weekly. Great way to share little clips with friends and family. Everybody can see YouTube. A nice way to spread the word about our show. And I think probably the best way to consume MacBreak weekly would be to subscribe to it and your favorite podcast client. It's free. There's audio feeds and video feeds. Just look for mbw and if you like it, would you do me a favor and leave us a five star review? Tell everybody how great this show is because that helps us too. Thanks for being here everybody. We'll see you next time. But now I am sad to say it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you. Get back to work. Break time is over.
- [141:25]
B
Close your eyes, exhale, Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [141:41]
A
And breathe.
- [141:42]
B
Oh sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts New Year New Me. Cute. But how about New Year New Money? With Experian, you can actually take control of your your finances, check your FICO score, find ways to save and get matched with credit card offers giving you time to power through those New Year's goals. You know you're going to crush start the year off right. Download the Experian app based on FICO's Score8 model offers an approval not guaranteed. Eligibility requirements and terms apply subject to credit check which may impact your credit scores. Offers not available in all states. See experian.com for details. Experian.